Page 42 - Time Special Edition Alternative Medicine (January 2020)
P. 42
Nothing to
Sneeze About
It’s true: global warming is making seasonal allergies
worse than ever. Turns out some of the best weapons
against this itchy future may be ancient ones
BY BRYAN WALSH
The spring of 2019 (like many springs in The became available over the counter in 2012, manu-
past 25 years) was a great one for fans of preter- facturers shipped more than 8 million pills. And
naturally warm weather and prematurely budding now we can’t even predict when hay fever and its
flowers. It was significantly less so for any of the vexing relatives will come knocking? Something
roughly 40% of Americans who suffer from sea- that is so common, so annoying and so unpre-
sonal allergies. According to a report from the En- dictable is bound to have desperate victims seek-
vironmental Protection Agency, warmer tempera- ing relief wherever they believe they can find it.
tures between 1995 and 2015 have lengthened the In fact, allergy sufferers have been quick to turn
allergy season by up to three weeks by pushing oak to alternative-medicine options in significant
and elm trees—two of the most notorious offend- numbers—upwards of 1 in 4 of them, according to
ers for spring allergies—to sprout earlier in the year. a 2011 study. But the question, as always, is: Are
And that meant millions of Americans found them- any of those treatments more than uncertain (as
selves sneezing and sniffling, blowing their noses well as unregulated) hope in a bottle?
and dabbing at watery eyes well ahead of sched- The short answer is yes, particularly if that an-
ule. As Alvin Sanico of Johns Hopkins Hospital says, swer includes “butterbur.” Butterbur is an herb
“People were caught by surprise.” whose roots were made into a remedy for head-
Nature’s global-warming-induced practical joke aches and inflammation by Native Ameri cans.
is just the latest reminder of how tough allergies Today you can buy tablets of it over the counter.
can be to control. The annual costs of asthma and In a 2002 study published in the British Medical
allergic rhinitis in the U.S. are already estimated at Journal, Swiss researchers showed that one tab-
$60 billion. On the day the antihistamine Allegra let taken four times daily can be as effective as
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