101 Ways to Save Money on Health Care

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  If it has little to do with either hay or fever, why call it hay fever?

Anyone who suffers from itchy eyes, runny nose, and post-nasal drainage during the summer months knows how hay fever feels, even if they’ve never called it that. Nowadays doctors call hay fever ‘seasonal allergic rhinitis’ instead. In addition to the above symptoms, some patients suffer from cough, fatigue, or wheezing. In over 25 years of medicine, I have yet to see someone who actually runs a fever, at least not in the traditional over-heated sense. Perhaps it was originally called a ‘fever’ because until this past century the difference between infection and allergy was not well-understood.

As for the allergy component, certainly people can be allergic to hay, but most of us are not around hay on a daily basis. However, we are around grass and weeds, and may be allergic to either. Each spring, tree pollen is the earliest environmental allergy trigger, followed by grass, and then weeds. Ragweed is one of the more common weeds that induce symptoms in mid to late summer.

Here are 5 things your doctor would suggest to treat hay fever effectively. Continue reading →