Stinging nettle
Stinging nettle is a natural antihistamine. If you have hayfever, firstly how are you? The pollen count has been really high lately! Secondly, have you tried nettles yet to help ease your allergies?
Nettle is best known for its sting when you touch it. But this wild medicine also contains antihistamine phytochemicals that can help ease allergies, like hayfever.
Herbalists have been using nettles for allergies for a long time, but there is some research now that gives us some insight into how they work. A 2009 paper in the journal Phytotherapy Research found that nettle inhibits several key inflammatory events that cause these symptoms of seasonal allergies, including mast cells and Histamine-1 receptors. (1)
Researchers in 2017 conducted a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial, which is the gold standard in science, and found that people who took nettle had lower eosinophil white blood cell counts. (2) Basically, the immune system was less active because the nettle was helping reduce the histamine response that causes the immune system to overreact and give us all those nasty allergy symptoms!