“Sometimes I look outside and then I think: oh nice weather. But after half an hour in the garden I have to go inside. Then I start to sneeze a lot, I get a runny nose and itch in my ears and palate. I really recover from it,” says Aranka while sitting on the couch inside.
No holding on
Aranka has already tried everything, and now she has pills that work nicely. But on days like these, there’s no stopping it. “It has been dry for so long, and I have the impression that everything blooms at the same time. Then the medicines are insufficient.” The hay fever period lasts from February to August.
The worst part is that she can’t do everything. “Recently we had the idea with friends to go to a recreational lake and have a barbecue in the grass. I was really looking forward to that, but it’s no fun for anyone with me there. I’m coughing all the time, that’s very tiring. So I decided not to go and stay at home.”
Sleep with the windows open
And sleeping is also complicated in this heat: without the windows open it is too hot in the house, but with the windows open all the pollen comes in. “In the morning I wake up and then I immediately have a minutes-long sneeze. That takes a lot of energy, also physically: sneezing takes a lot of strength from your body, which is also busy producing antibodies and reacting to the pollen all the time.”
Aranka suffers a lot from unsolicited advice, although well-intentioned. There are also a lot of stories about what would help against hay fever. Which is correct, we tell you in this video:
Aranka hopes that the allergies will become less in the future. “It is already much less than before, so maybe I will grow out of it. And in the meantime, she will go on holiday in the summer. “To another European country or to the coast, because it bothers me much less there.”
According to Buienradar there are in the Netherlands about 2 million people who are more or less affected by the grasses that are now in bloom. The dryness, sun and the little bit of wind that there is together are the ideal conditions to release pollen.
Remarkable amount of advice about hay fever
The Central Bureau of Drugstore Companies has also noticed this, a spokesperson said this week. “A striking amount of advice is being asked for and given. Probably because several allergies occur at the same time.” Kruidvat sells about 40 percent more hay fever medicines than in the same period last year, and online sales and searches are also high. “There are literally thousands of searches for hay fever every day.”
Last week, 223 out of 100,000 residents reported to their GP with hay fever complaints. That is the highest number measured this year, but not significantly more than last year at this time. Usually the first three weeks of June are the weeks with the most hay fever patients.
Buienradar’s pollen radar for the next five days:
2023-06-10 08:28:58
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