Welcome to the May edition of ‘Update’ the monthly newsletter for customers and friends of AllergyBestBuys.

We’re very proud of our award-winning anti-allergy bedding range with its selection of pillows and duvets to suit every taste and budget. It’s where our business began, manufacturing feather & down pillows for hospitals that could be sterilised and made allergy-free by boil-washing without going lumpy.
The now-famous Medivac Featherfresh pillows are still our no.1 bestseller and together with our 100% dustmite-proof Medivac encasings for mattresses and pillows are, we believe, the best allergy protection for your bed that money can buy.

Buy anything from our anti-dustmite range this week and we’ll send you a FREE ticket for the Allergy Show worth £18. Type Allergy Show at the checkout to claim your ticket.

This month’s special offers give you terrific savings on the Medinose Phototherapy Unit and the Medivac Turbo Carpet Brush. You can save a whopping £20 on a LightAir IonFlow Air Purifier and £4 on a Window-filta twin-pack, both must-have products to combat pollen in the hayfever season.
And there’s £1 OFF Saponaqua Therapy Bar, Balm or Body Butter, firm favourites with our customers with dry skin problems.
We also have the latest allergy news and a fabulous nickel-free leather belt that would make a thoughtful gift for the nickel-allergic man in your life.

This year’s Show at London’s Olympia is being held earlier than usual, running from May 21^st - May 23^rd. On Sunday 23rd, Linda Gamlin, co-author of the bestselling Allergy Bible will be demonstrating a number of products she recommends from AllergyBestBuys in her talk “What to do about dustmite allergy.” You can see all our anti-dustmite products here and we are giving away a FREE ticket for two to the Show, worth £18, when you buy something from the range. Under 16’s go free, so you can take the family to attend the seminars, join in the Parent Workshops and have fun in the Kids’ Kitchen. Type ‘Allergy Show’ at the checkout when you buy any anti-dustmite product to get your free ticket.

CAN YOU HELP? New Qu-Chi Acupressure Bands for hayfever were the runaway success story of 2009, helping thousands of sufferers relieve their symptoms without drugs in a completely natural way. This year, the creators have made a Qu-Chi Acupressure Band especially for children and young people and have asked AllergyBestBuys customers to help confirm the sizing.

If your child is under 16, suffers the miseries of hayfever and is prepared to tell us about the fit and comfort of the new Qu-Chi Acupressure Band for children, please complete the form here. In return, we’ll send you a Qu-Chi Band completely free of charge and a simple questionnaire for you to fill out and return to us. Click here now.

itch..itch..itchy tummy. Do you have nickel allergy? If the itching is combined with a red rash, raised bumps and broken skin around your belt buckle you’re among the countless thousands who suffer from repeated contact with nickel. Problem solved with our new beautifully made NickelSmart™ leather belts in black or brown. Click here now.

SAVE £10 on Medinose Phototherapy for hayfever, dust and pet allergy. Writing in the Daily Telegraph last month Professor Jean Emberlin, Director of the National Pollen and Aerobiology Research Unit at the University of Worcester says: ‘Try an infrared light treatment called phototherapy with probes that beam red light up your nostrils. Nobody knows exactly how they work, but it is thought that they alter the blood supply to the nasal passages which helps remove allergens, while increasing the permeability of the membranes. In trials, phototherapy had a significant effect. You have to use it for three minutes a day for two weeks, but it should help to reduce the sneezing and enable you to breathe more easily at night.’

If you’d like to try the Medinose Phototherapy treatment here’s a chance to buy now and SAVE £10. The Medinose is one of our bestselling allergy solutions for hayfever, dust and pet allergies and results are so universally good that the manufacturers offer a 30 day money-back guarantee. Usual price is £79.99 but you can save £10 when you type code 100513 at the checkout. Offer ends 15^th June. For more info and to buy click here now.

Study data recently published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology show how neighbourhood environment is a risk factor in the development of asthma in children. Researchers discovered that children who lived near major highway or railway intersections have higher diagnoses of asthma. Dr Young Juhn of Mayo Clinic’s Department of Community Paediatric and Adolescent Medicine explained: “Using nearest propensity score, children who lived facing an intersection of major highways or railways had about 40 to 70 per cent increased risk of developing childhood asthma. What this tells us is that clinicians need to be concerned about neighbourhood environment beyond home environment to understand the individual asthma case.”
If you are concerned about your child’s exposure to traffic fumes we can offer a comfortable MicroAirscreen mask that will fit children up to 8yrs. You may also consider our Air Supply personal Air Purifier which keeps the air pure in the area immediately surrounding the wearer. Click the product links for more info and to buy.

It’s time to follow the old saying and move into Summer mode with your bedding. This week I have unpoppered the 2 duvets that make up the 13.5tog winter weight of our Spundown Duo-Duvet, leaving us with a Springtime 9tog until it gets really warm, although last year the Summer was so miserable that we never changed it for its lighter weight 4.5tog partner. Fingers crossed that we get a proper Summer this year with sunny days and warm evenings. The joy of the Duo-Duvet of course is that you can control the weight and warmth of your bedding to suit the season and keep the duvets free of dustmites with a 60°wash in your home washing machine. I simply wash the one I’m taking off then Hoover it up into a VacuSac for easy storage. If you’re ready for some new bedding I highly recommend these versatile Spundown Duo-Duvets, well-priced and beautifully made in England. Check them out here and type Allergy Show at the checkout to get a FREE ticket when you place your order.

Leading national allergy charity Allergy UK has 2 places left for the 10k London Run on Sunday July 11^th. If you would like to join the Allergy UK team, please send an email here or call Dawn on 01322 611640. Click here for more details of the run and please visit the JustGiving page here if you would like to sponsor the Allergy UK team.

A study of thousands of women published in the journal Clinical and Experimental Allergy in 2008 found that having more than two glasses of wine a day almost doubles the risk of allergy symptoms, even among women who were free of seasonal or year-round allergies at the start of the study. In an earlier study in Sweden in 2005, scientists looked at thousands of people and found that compared with the general population, those with diagnoses of asthma, bronchitis and hayfever were far more likely to experience sneezing, a runny nose and lower-airway symptoms after having a drink. Red wine and white wine were the most frequent triggers and women, for unknown reasons, were about twice as likely to be affected as men.

The problem is not always the alcohol itself. Wine and beer contain sulphites (US sulfites), a group of compounds known to provoke asthma and other allergy-like symptoms. Beer, wine and spirits also contain histamine, produced by yeast and bacteria during the fermentation process. Histamine, of course, is the chemical that sets off allergy symptoms. So if you experience increased allergy symptoms after drinking you may be histamine-intolerant. It may be helpful to be on the lookout for other foods that either contain or release histamine, like aged cheeses, pickled or fermented products and yeast-containing foods, like bread, cider and grapes. Our comprehensive list of histamine-rich or histamine-releasing foods is on the AllergyBestBuys website here.

More news and offers in next month’s ‘Update’.

Best wishes

Janet

ps. Thank you to all who ordered the new AirTamer 302 personal air purifier and waited so patiently for delivery. Our stock was held up by the volcanic ash problems that affected air transport but we have now received the AirTamers and caught up with the back-orders. Thank you for your understanding.