Have you seen the Allergen Index Today?

If you’ve seen the latest weather forecast you may have noticed that they mentioned the Pollen count. This is great for people who are sensitive or allergic to pollen but how about the “Allergen count” or “indoor allergen index” for allergy patients who are allergic to things in their own homes? Ordinary allergies like dust mites, mold and pets can be harder to live with than pollen allergy.

The scientists who give the weather forecasts have Universities and other institutions all over the country helping them get the numbers for the pollen count but for our homes there is no such help.

You can’t expect them to know the Indoors Allergen count for every home but it’s odd when you think of it that we can’t get a meter of some kind that we could use.

Many people have meters for their blood sugar or blood pressure, so why not an Indoor allergy meter?

It’s interesting that when measurements are made of particular allergens – such as pets 100% of homes have traces of pet dander even though many homes have no pets.

As the folk song has it, “The answer my friend is blowing in the wind…” – many allergens are blown into the home and some are carried in on our shoes and clothing where they quickly lodge in carpets.

So we can’t just look at a reading on a dial as we look at a barometer or thermometer; each room in our home has to be looked at carefully for us to see where we take action and what we can do.

There’s a useful quiz on the website of the American College for Allergy, Asthma and Immunology that you may find useful and there is a section where there is picture of the rooms of a house where you can click around on and check out what to do for your home

The point of all this is not to cure your allergies – you do that , in my opinion with the right Nutrition plan -what you can do with a room by room “Allergy audit” is decrease the load your body has to carry – that’s the load of particles that would trigger an allergic reaction. If we can clean up our act in the home / garden and garage we may find ourselves a lot healthier with fewer allergy symptoms and more energy.