During the last couple of weeks, since the onset of spring, I have encountered countless articles giving tips on how to alleviate allergy symptoms. Most of them are repetitious, though, and offer advice that doesn't really let you live with your allergies. I mean, what sane person, with allergic rhinitis or not, would be willing to stay indoors, under airconditioning, and miss the beauty of spring? I can't stand staying indoors for more than a day, and to tell me to basically shut myself out from the rest of the world so I won't break into sneezing fits just doesn't cut it. There has to be a better way. Of course, there are continually more and hopefully, better, medications going out in the market, but here's another take on the problem: alternative healing.

Carmela Mager, a practicing acupuncturist, applies the principles of Chinese medicine to alleviate allergy symptoms by modifying a person's diet.

Many of my patients have reported improvements in their health by lightening up their diets in the spring. We naturally eat less or even fast to cleanse the body of the fat and heavy food of the winter. We emphasize food that contains the qualities of spring: fresh greens, sprouts, juicing with carrots, beets, apples, mint tea and the pungent cooking herbs basil, rosemary, dill and bay leaf. These are foods that support good liver function and produce and activate the enzymes that help in various phases of detoxification.

Additionally, she says that it would help to eliminate items that harm the liver such as coffee and alcohol, and pump up on vitamin-rich foods, especially on vitamin C.

I am not advocating alternative medicine; I know too less about it to say much. But then, when has a nutritious diet ever been harmful? Whether it does indeed treat allergies or not, I think we can all benefit from such an eating regimen anyway.

Carmela Mager's article, "Chinese medicine offers help for spring allergies", is published online on Chapel Hill News.