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Try your doctor and get an allergy test.

 

For years I thought I had hay fever and it turned out most of the time it was a dust allergy. If it is hay fever, they can tell you what kind of grasses to avoid (I also have medium allergy to the grass that often grows next to rice fields). I also got some decent allergy pills that dont make me drowsy.

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The big thing this year is a few layers of medical gauze under the face mask surrounding the nose - it was shown in scientific studies to improve the efficiency of masks by up to 50%, e.g a mask that stopped 50% of all total pollen suddenly stopped 75% with the additional gauze - all brands showed varying degrees of improvement.

Saw it on NHK news.

 

The amount of pollen from cedar and cypress (Sugi and hinoki) is increasing each year, each year the total amount of pollen being released is a new record.

That is the reason why more and more people are starting to suffer from hayfever, at previous levels it wasn't enough, but as the levels increase an individual's threshold for handling the pollen is eventually reached.

 

Why is the amount of pollen increasing each year you ask? well each year the trees continue to get larger and mature and bigger trees release more pollen, so what you say? well many of the trees were planted by the thousands, millions probably post WWII to cope with the building boom etc. That good isn't it? well yes and no, They planted squillions of these trees everywhere especially all over steep hillsides in Nara, Mie and Wakayama, more than what was naturally there, but when they matured (not a fast growing tree like pinus radiata which is favoured plantation tree) it was not economically viable to harvest them, its cheaper to buy timber from Malaysia and Indonesia than to cut it down trees in Japan.

So each year they continue to get bigger (sugi can grow to 70m) so they keep growing and keep releasing ever increasing amounts of pollen each year.

Another issue, well known in Nara, Mie and Wakayama is that these trees cause landslides. The hills are rather steep and loaded with these massive trees that actually have quite shallow roots. So they are loading steep hillsides and contributing to instability.

So when it rains heavily you can see whole mountain sides slip away.

Caught on tape here.

 

So what to do.....I know lets build some of the most massive earth protection structures on the planet, pump millions of tonnes of concrete and cover mountains in nets...

protect the roads and keep the construction industry ticking over....

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dscn43241kl0.jpg

 

this is a minor road in Southern Nara.

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rurutenbi.jpg

 

Shin-ruru make cold medicine, they also do a nasal spray that seems to work quite well, sometimes I get temporary hayfever or allergies: sugi season, rice harvesting, in really dusty places, cats. Its quite mild but my nose goes haywire and I sneeze like crazy, if I use a simple spray its calms down the cilia, resets them almost then I am fine.

3-4 week ago I was sneezing like crazy, used the spray a couple of days it calmed things down and I have been fine since.

 

Japan is turning me into a medical weirdo!

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Is it as bad as last year yet? I'm doing ok, I think it was last year when it was just terrible for a period of about 2 weeks I hardly went out locked myself in it was the only way to stay sane.

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Both my eldest son and I are chronic hayfever sufferers - me since a child (so a lotta years experience here!), the boy since he was about 10.

 

We have been in Perth the whole time, so changes are not due to different locations. Some years he is bad, and some years I am bad, some years both good, some years both bad. I doubt that it has as much to do with the pollen level as it does our personal level of tolerence. After all these years if living with it I have finally made the decision to start seeing naturopaths and see if they can't get our own bodies balanced so that we can tolerate the spring more.

 

Might be worth a look if you are also suffering.

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