When you hear someone complaining about hay fever, you may not give it a second thought if you don’t suffer from it.  If you are a sufferer, then you know all too well how this can affect you miserably. Not only does it make you feel like you have a stinking cold, but also how it affects your performance.  Blocked nose, Sore throat, difficulty breathing, eyes streaming, headaches and drowsiness are the most common symptoms affecting more men than women.

What is Hay Fever?

Hayfever is an allergic reaction to pollen. There are approx 30 types of pollen that can affect us, The most common is grass and tree pollen. When the particles come into contact with your nose, eyes and throatyour body sees it as a threat, reacts and goes on to treat it as if you had a virus – hence the runny eyes and nose. Just think how this can really upset a weekend, midweek time trails or Sunday club runs. For some it can be almost impossible to take part in any sport, so we thought we would do our best to give you the top tips to help keep the worst of the symptoms at bay!

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Preventing hay fever – start as you mean to go on

A good night sleep – A good idea is to keep the windows and curtains closed in the day. This significantly reduces the spores entering the room in the day. By closing the curtains this helps to keep it a little cooler as the sun doesn’t get into the room.

Commute to work – you can now get good pollen filters for you’re the vents in your car, get one of these and keep the windows closed.

If you work outside – Get some sunglasses that cover your eye area well to avoid as many spores getting to your eyes as possible. Vaseline can also be used around the nose area to help block out the pollen.

When you get home – It’s a good idea to shower and get into clean clothes to wash off any pollen hat has landed on you in the day – every little counts!

Other tips and pointers are to try not to dry your clothes outside, Vacuum regularly and if need be wash any pets that have been exposed to pollen as they carry the pollen on them too. It may sound a bit extreme but in some cases, but whatever it takes to help remove pollen from you will improve your condition.

If you can avoid anti histamines, great! They do help but can make you feel drowsy and this is not a welcome side effect when you want to get a good training session in or put in a sterling performance.

Other than locking yourself indoors or walking around in a bubble there is not much more you can do. We hope this has helped in some way and should at least relieve some of your symptoms.

How do you deal with your hay fever before a ride? Let us know in the comments below!



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