Well my friends, allergy season is rearing its ugly head and I for one have mixed emotions about it.  I am extremely happy to welcome spring (I don’t know how much more snow and cold weather my mind and body can take) but the sneezing, itchy eyes and headaches I am not so excited about.  I never had outdoor allergies until about three years ago and I pray to God that he will take them back someday.

There are numerous over-the-counter medicines to take for outdoor allergies, but I try not to take medicines when at all possible, so last year I was happy to learn about a natural allergy relief remedy.  While at the farmers’ market at Mockingbird Station, I met a local beekeeper who somehow convinced me that putting bee pollen in my food (I mainly put it in oatmeal, yogurt and tea) would help my allergies. I was a bit skeptical at first but what he had to say really made sense. He told me by ingesting the pollen produced by bees in and around my zip code, that my body would become immune and my allergies would be less severe.

I have to say that after incorporating the pollen into my food my allergies did ease up a bit. I am not sure if this was a mental thing or if it actually worked but it is definitely worth a try for anybody out there suffering from outdoor allergies like me.

What do you take for your allergies? Have you learned of any other natural remedies to reduce outdoor allergies?

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I am all for taking my daily vitamins and at the price they are these days (A pair of great shoes for $30 is a steal but $30 for a bottle of vitamins….Really?), I want them to not only work, but work well.  But, how do I know they are really working?

Last week I had a bone density test and the radiologist told me that sometimes she will be reading scans and she can see her patients’ vitamins they took that morning un-dissolved in their system.  She told me that I should soak all of the vitamins I take in a glass of water.  If they dissolved then they were working and if they didn’t dissolve then they were probably just passing through my system without doing a thing.  Now if I am going to pay for vitamins then I want them to be working!

I love a good experiment so I went home and took all of the vitamins I take plus a few more and watched to see what would happen when they were soaked in water.  Now if vitamins aren’t dissolving in water then they are sure not going to dissolve in your stomach with the acidity and warmth.  All of the vitamins dissolved except for one calcium pill and I also noticed that the Centrum’s daily vitamin dissolved 4x as fast as my Women’s One a Day.

What I found out from this little experiment is to get a new calcium pill and to switch to Centrum next time I need a new bottle of daily vitamins!

Assuming that you soak your vitamins in water after reading this post, what did you find out?

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I am a strong believer in getting at least 7 hours of sleep every night. Not only does a good nights sleep keep you from coming off your rocker for lack of it, but it also keeps your skin glowing and helps prevent your body from gaining weight (I will have to ask my dad why exactly this is the case). In order to get a good nights sleep, I have a little ritual I go through every night when I get into bed. This ritual consists of putting on my sleep mask (Mary Green makes my favorite sleep masks), lathering my lips with Neosporin’s overnight renewal therapy and a little pill that goes by the name of melatonin.

According to Wikipedia, the primary motivation for the use of melatonin may be as a natural aid to better sleep. Incidental benefits to health and well-being may accumulate, due to melatonin’s role as an antioxidant and its stimulation of the immune system and several components of the endocrine system.

What I have found with melatonin is that I can only take 1 mg, because if I take any more than that I have some pretty crazy dreams, which actually results in a lack of sleep. If I don’t take it though, then I will never fall asleep. You can buy melatonin at your local corner store, also known as Walgreens, for$6.99 and most of the time it’s buy one get one free!

Oh and by the way, Mary Green makes the CUTEST Breakfast at Tiffany’s sleep mask. It is a must have for any Holly Golightly fans!

What are your bedtime rituals? For those of you that have tried using melatonin already, did you have crazy dreams too?

*Image from Google images

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