Say Goodbye to Hay Fever with this Natural Remedy

It's springtime, the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing and the sun is shining. Well sort of. This time of year also brings hay fever with it. If you're like me and millions of other people, your nose starts streaming, your eyes start running and you can't stop sneezing. But did you know there are three really common plants that when combined together can offer you some amazing relief? In this video I'm going to show you how to identify them and then how to combine them together to make a delicious drink that actually helps hay fever and hopefully yours too. Stinging nettle or Vertica dioica is really common and many of you are going to recognize this straight away. You probably lived your childhoods being wary of it. What maybe you didn't know is that it's been used for centuries in traditional medicine to treat a variety of ailments including allergies. Histamine is a chemical that's released by the body in response to allergens. It's what causes those symptoms like sneezing, watery eyes and itching. Stinging nettle actually contains compounds that block the release of histamine which leads to a reduction in hay fever symptoms and hopefully making you feel a bit better. To identify it's pretty easy. Firstly it grows natively in Europe, Asia, North America and North Africa. It loves nitrogen rich moist soil. It has square stems, leaves in opposite pairs and toothed leaves. Earlier in the year it doesn't have any flowers. The thing that gives them away compared to the dead nettle family are the needles which will sting you if you brush up against them. I've got a bit of a knack with picking them. If you get underneath and yank them up from below you should get away unscathed. When harvesting only take the tops. As the leaves get older they start to contain oxalates which irritate your kidneys. Though you can just take some nettle tops, boil them up and get some hay fever relief. But stay tuned to see how you can power up this remedy to make it much more effective. Ribwort plantain and great plantain. Now I use either ribwort or great plantain interchangeably. They've also been used in traditional medicine for a long time. It's a great anti-histamine so much so that if you sting yourself on nettles or even get stung by an insect like a mosquito simply chew them up and rub them on the sting. It really is amazing how much relief you get from this. The habitats of ribwort and great plantain are pretty similar. They grow in grassy areas but also love roadside and I often find it along gravelly footpaths. Ribwort plantain has long narrow leaves with prominent veins that run the whole length of the leaf. They grow in a basal rosette formation and are all sessile which basically means they're stalkless. The leaves are around 3 to 10 centimetres long and up to about 2 centimetres wide and pointed at the tip. When it flowers it comes up with a stalk that's topped with a cylindrical flower head. Greater plantain can actually grow much bigger with the leaves being small like they are here or as large as 20 to 30 centimetres long. Again they have prominent veins. The biggest difference compared to ribwort plantain is the shape of the leaf. These are much wider. Now like with the nettles you can use these on your own and get some relief from hay fever. There is a final piece of the puzzle for the tonic I make for my family so stay tuned. Ground ivy is a great one for drying up mucous membranes. It's got anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative properties. If I'm out for a walk and I'm suffering from hay fever I will look for ground ivy because it really does wonders for those mucous membranes if your eyes and your nose are running. Just pick this up and munch on a few leaves and you should get relief within a few minutes. You can identify it largely by its kidney shaped round lobed leaves. They're dark green and have scalloped edges and they also grow in opposites on the stem. The stem itself can grow around half a metre long. It's a creeper and is in fact known as creeping Charlie in the US. It's a bit of a burden to keen gardeners and once it starts getting into your garden you can have a tough time getting rid of it. When you crush the leaves to me it smells almost medicinal but not in a bad way. Right and now to the fun part. To make my hay fever tonic take a handful of each leaf and give them a rinse. Then pop them in a pan of water and bring that water to a gentle simmer. Once it's simmering turn off the heat and leave the leaves to steep in that water. Now what you do next is entirely up to you. You can either have it as a lovely warm cup of tea or if like me you prefer a nice cold drink stick it in the fridge for a while squeeze some lemon in it and have it as a lovely refreshing drink like so. Either way it's really going to help that hay fever and keep those symptoms at bay. If my hay fever is particularly bad I can get through two or three of these in a day. Now I would love to know how you get on with this. If you give it a go please do stick a comment below and let me know how you get on. If you found this video useful and you'd like to learn more about plants and fungi and how we can incorporate them into our daily lives please do give the video a like and do subscribe to the channel. Cheers.