Natural Antihistamines For Allergy Relief

If you’re looking for natural allergy relief in the summer for you or your kids it’s worth trying to include more natural antihistamine foods in your diet.

Lots of foods – often surprise, surprise those we don’t eat enough of – are rich in natural antihistamines that give natural allergy relief for everything from the runny nose, watery eyes and inflamed sinuses of hay fever to hives and itching skin or inflammation from mosquito bites.

Now these natural antihistamine foods are not a magical natural remedy that suddenly “cures” all our allergies but they can be a valuable tool in a natural allergy relief toolkit.

So I’ve put together for you:

• An introduction to natural antihistamines
• Simple tips for an allergy relief diet
• A list of naturally antihistamine food

I do hope these help you and your family find some relief from allergies this summer, do let me know how you get on.

If you are struggling right now with sinus congestion do check out these quick sinus relief tips and for more healthy living tips follow me on Pinterest and have a read of my other natural remedies.

An Introduction To Natural Antihistamines

Plants are chock full of chemicals that can help our bodies look after ourselves including a group called flavonoids that help our immune system regulate itself.

The key flavonoid for natural allergy relief is quercetin a natural antihistamine which occurs in a wide range of food but especially green leaves, berries and herbs. Two other flavonoids that can provide allergy relief are rutin and luteolin.

Another plant chemical which seems to give particular relief to runny nose symptoms of allergies and hay fever is bromelain which is found in pineapples.

It’s possible to buy quercetin and bromelain supplements but its actually really easy to get plenty of them through a very simple allergy relief diet.

A Simple Allergy Relief Diet

The big problem with too many diets we’re encouraged to follow for natural remedies is they are just too complicated.

So the best way to get the benefits of a natural allergy relief diet is to base it around a few simple habits:

• Eat berries every day
• Eat an apple – including skin – daily
• Jazz up your salads to include quercetin rich leaves e.g. watercress, radicchio, rommaine lettuce
• Season food with quercetin rich garnishes e.g. dill, coriander, capers
• Drink green & herbal teas – if you start a very basic herb garden in containers you can have easy every day access to antihistamine herbs
• Drink bromelain rich pineapple juice or make anti-histamine smoothies combining pineapple with quercetin rich berries and leaves
• Blend your own antihistamine rich quick green soups

I’ve broken up a big list of 45 naturally antihistamine foods below into sections to support these simple habits. Now some of the ingredients will look crazily obscure so just look out for stuff you know you could buy near you or grow really simply or even forage for free in local countryside.

It really is worth trying to eat more of them as they not only help with allergies but also help boost immunity generally.

45 Naturally Antihistamine Foods

1. Natural Antihistamine Berries & Fruit

There are natural antihistamines in many berries including :

• Elderberry
• Blackberry
• Cranberry
• Blueberry
• Raspberries
• Mulberry

Fresh berries can be expensive but elderberries and blackberries can both be picked for free and you can easily grow raspberries in a small space and grow blueberries in containers.

Other naturally antihistamine fruit to work into daily diet are:

• Apples
• Pineapple
• Juneberry / saskatoon
• Figs

2. Natural Antihistamine Salads

Many of the slightly less common – but super tasty – salad leaves are rich in natural antihistamines :

• Watercress
• Raddichio
• Asparagus
• Red leaf lettuce
• Wild rocket
• Romaine lettuce

Fancy salad leaves can also be expensive but they are very simple and quick to grow for ourselves in containers.

3. Natural Antihistamine Herbs & Spices

Including more simple herbs in our diet has all sorts of health benefits. And we don’t need to be fancy herbalists to do it. Just chuck these in cooking or sprinkle on a salad or drink in the most basic tea:

• Thyme – it is easy to grow thyme from cuttings
• Dill
• Parsley – it is also easy to grow parsley quickly from cuttings
• Cilantro / coriander
• Oregano / marjoram – again you can easily grow oregano from cuttings
• Tarragon
• Ginger
• Turmeric
• Basil
• Chamomile
• Nettles
• Rosemary – you can also grow rosemary from cuttings

And herbs really are very easy to grow in a few pots by a back door or on a balcony or in the kitchen. Just a little herb garden like this can provide us with instant, cheap access to natural antibiotics, headache relief and a whole host of other simple health remedies.

4. Natural Antihistamine Garnishes

Now we’re never going to eat huge quantities of these garnishes but some of them like capers are incredibly rich in antihistamine quercetin. So do add them to meals regularly for an extra punch of flavour as part of your simple allergy relief diet:

• Lovage
• Capers
• Banana peppers
• Fennel leaves
• Okra
• Red onions (raw)
• Ancho peppers
• Serano pepper
• Moringa / drumstick
• Chia seeds
• Green chilli peppers
• Scallions

5. Natural Antihistamines For Green Soup

Green soup is one my favourite simple healthy eating habits. It’s a brilliant way to get a daily boost of immune boosting green leaves. And it is also a handy way to eat some of the very quercetin rich green leaves that can really help with allergy relief including:

• Dock
• Radish leaves – radishes are super easy and quick to grow
• Sow thistle – a kind of dandelion also known as hare’s lettuce
• Kale
• Mustard greens

Now I know some of these green leaves look a bit weird but the dock and radish leaves for example are super rich in quercetin and again you could very easily grow your own

Some of the green leaves richest in antihistamines are quite bitter so the secret to getting a good helping is to saute them very gently in plenty of butter before simmering – still gently – in stock and then blending into green soup.

Now if your kids are fussy eaters like mine, there’s no way they are going to touch green soup but you can always hide green leafy veg in a really cheesy sauce for macaroni cheese or lasagna or the like.

6. Other Naturally Antihistamine Foods

I have to say I am not a big fan of fancy super foods generally unless I can grow it easily in my garden or pick it for free!! Nut these super foods do seem to help with allergy relief and a whole host of other every day conditions we struggle with so they can be worth keeping in stock. The honey definitely is a no brainer as it’s so helpful with coughs and colds:

• Green tea
• Natural honey
• Carob powder – a natural sweetener
• Buckwheat
• Goji berries

So there you go a big list of naturally antihistamine food that you can include in a simple allergy relief diet to help you and your kids cope with allergies this summer. I do hope these natural allergy relief tips help.

For more simple health tips follow me on Pinterest and have a read of these other natural remedies:

• 30 Quick Sinus Relief Tips
• 25 Natural Sore Throat Remedies
• 20 Natural Antibiotics
• 6 Natural Headache Remedies
• 7 Natural Stomach Ache Remedies
• 15 Natural Immunity Boosters
• 28 Must Know DIY Natural Remedies

Original image source: Thyme Flowers, Sow Thistle by Bob Peterson.