Dr. Peter Lin: Do natural remedies for allergies really work?

With autumn around the corner, fall seasonal allergies are following quickly, and so too are natural allergy treatments.

CBC Radio's house doctor Peter Lin spoke to The Early Edition about the effectiveness of some of the natural treatments advertised to help stop the sneezing and sniffling.

1. Saltwater and a neti pot

If you Google anything about allergies, plenty of results will say, "Put saltwater in a neti pot and pour it up your nose." A neti pot is like a teapot, andyou pour this stuff into your nostril and basically wash out your sinuses.

Remember though, it's not just anything you can put up there. Your body runs on 0.9 per cent salt solution. In other words, if you put tap water or seawater (in there), it will burn it.

It also has to be bacteria-free, so be sure to either use distilled water or use water that has been boiled and cooled down.

This is not for normal sufferers it's for people who have tried everything and nothing works.

2. Taking a shower

One thing about showering is there's the steam, which either gets rid of mucus or thins it out. The job of the nose is to humidify, to make air moist, so it's as if the shower is doing the nose's job for it.

A shower essentially is washing away the pollens. It's a temporary solution, because we know you're going to be outside again eventually.

3. Eating wasabi

We've all had that experience when you eat too much wasabi and your whole nose is on fire. It doesn't last very long, but it does have decongestant chemicals in it.

We have pills that are decongestants, but theway they work is they squeeze your artery tight, in order to make more space in your nose to allow you to breathe.

Unfortunately, they squeeze all your other arteries tight, soif you have high blood pressure or heart disease, we don't want you to being taking any decongestant pills.

The good news is wasabi seems to be localized to your nose. We've never used it as a drug, so maybe if we did,there may be some side effects. But for short-term relief I guess you could use it.

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4. Local honey

The argument is that local honey works because bees are harvesting local pollen from local flowers.

So the idea is, when you eat the local honey, you're getting a small amount of local pollen, so if you're allergic to it, you're slowly getting desensitized to it.

There are contradicting studies on the topic, so the bottom line is there's no consensus on this, but if you like honey, supporting your local honey farm is not a bad thing.

Are there any natural cures that people need to be careful with?

Some of the herbal ones you need to careful of, so be sure to look for warnings on the label from Health Canada.

The problem in some is the inclusion of the ingredients pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PA). PA is toxic to your liver and your lung. Be sure to look for a label that says PA-free.

Just look and study a bit before jumping into using herbals.

How do some of these methods compare to just taking allergy drugs like Reactin or Claritin?

The allergy medications work much better because they're designed to be antihistamines. Also, there are nose sprays and eye drops and injections to desensitize you.

I think the idea behind natural remedies is "in addition to,"as opposed to "in place of" allergy medicines. If we combine all these things together, then maybe you can go through the season without suffering too much and without needing a lot of medication.

This interview was condensed and edited.