Allergic rhinitis is also called hay fever. It was Dr. John Bostock who on March 16, 1819 presented it to the Medical and Chirurgical society, the first recorded description of what he later called “catarrhus aestivus” or summer catarrh and which soon became known as hay fever. Actually Huangdi’s Internal Classic, a famous Chinese Medical classic, written during the Warring States Period, (475 B.C-221 B.C.) described “鼽嚏”, a condition very similar to allergic rhinitis. In Chinese history of thousands years, there were a lot of Chinese Medical literatures talking about it and its treatments, including acupuncture and Chinse herbs.
Worldwide, the number of people suffering from it increases each year. There are two existing types mainly. Some people experience it in the spring, summer or early fall when trees and weeds bloom and pollen counts are higher. Other experience it year-round. The former one is called seasonal allergic rhinitis and the latter is perennial one. People who have asthma or eczema or whose parent(s) has allergies are more likely to develop hay fever.
But allergic rhinitis was not that common during my practice when I was in Beijing (1997-2006). It was in Switzerland in 2007 that I started to treat it. Switzerland often tops the charts for "green" countries. Around 40% of its land is used for agriculture, while roughly 30% is covered by forest and woodland. Approximately one fifth of the Swiss population every year suffer from this problem and one of my interpreters called it a national disease. It has been one of the most commonly seen health problems in my practice since then.
According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the body’s immunity is the function of the defensive Qi. It defends the body surface against exogenous pathogenic factors, and also combats pathogenic factors once disease occurs and brings about recovery by eliminating the invading pathogenic factors. It is derived from what we eat and drink through the Spleen and Stomach, and circulates constantly all over the body via meridians with the assistance of the internal organs such as the Lung, Liver and Kidney.
In the viewpoint of TCM, Allergic rhinitis is a “wind” disease that penetrates from externally together with “cold” or “heat” and interferences with the defensive Qi in the Lung, the skin and the mucous membranes. This results in a backup of wind or a deficiency of the defensive Qi, leading to the development of the typical symptoms of allergies such as swelling, watery secretion, sneezing, allergic eczema and conjunctivitis. However, the weakness of the defensive Qi is its root. The purpose of the treatments is to strengthen the defensive Qi and to get rid of wind from the body.
In 2018, I treated a mom first and then her daughter. The mom had had seasonal allergic rhinitis for 15 years and the daughter had had perennial one for three years. The mom took western medications during spring while the daughter took them all year around. I administered acupuncture and cupping mainly for them two times a week. The mom and her daughter had ten sessions and eight respectively.
The mom said in her testimonial: “I have had seasonal allergy for more than 15 years. Each spring, I had to rely on allergy pills and stayed indoors to survive. This year, out of pure curiosity, I decided to give acupuncture a try. Wow, what a transformation! After three visits, my allergy symptoms reduced significantly, and I didn't feel I needed the medicine. I stopped the pills, and I was fine! After six visits, my symptoms were completely gone! I could hardly believe that my annual spring misery left me in three short weeks!”
“And this is no coincidence.” She continued, “With my success, I tried to persuade my teenage daughter to try acupuncture. She had year-round allergy and taking the allergy pill was her daily routine. Not surprisingly, a 15-year-old didn't want to have anything to do with the needles, until one day when her allergy got so bad that she couldn't go to school the next day. "Maybe I'll try acupuncture" she called me from home. Eight visits later, her allergy is gone, and for the first time in 3 years, she is pill free and feels great!”
While preparing for this blog, I read some research articles about efficacy of acupuncture on allergic rhinitis. One article was published at the journal of European Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in 2012. It was a multicenter, randomized, controlled trial done in China and South Korea. The results showed that active acupuncture showed a significantly greater effect on symptoms of allergic rhinitis than either sham acupuncture (which meant that the needles were inserted at non-acupuncture points) or no active treatment (which meant that no any treatment was done); and that the symptoms of allergic rhinitis decreased significantly after treatment in the both acupuncture and sham acupuncture groups and that acupuncture appears to be an effective and safe treatment for allergic rhinitis.
Another article was a systematic review and meta-analysis and published in 2022 at the journal of European Journal of Medical Research. 20 randomized controlled trials done in China, Germany, South Korea and Australia met the criteria and were analyzed. It concluded that: for adults with allergic rhinitis, acupuncture is superior to no intervention and sham acupuncture in lowering the severity of nasal symptoms and improving the life quality of patients and that the effect of acupuncture and cetirizine/loratadine may be similar.
A brochure with a title of Acupuncture: Review and Analysis of Reports on Controlled Clinical Trials published by World Health Organization in 2002, says that Acupuncture has been proved to be an effective treatment for allergic rhinitis.
If you or your friends are being bothered by this problem, give acupuncture a try! It’s effective and safe. Be patient and give some time as healing is a process. You may feel a big relief or have it free and enjoy the nature happily again.