After a few false starts, its looks like Spring may have finally arrived. Much and all as most of us love Spring, for some of us, it marks the arrival of the dreaded hay fever. Given the late and wet Winter, it is likely that we will see very high pollen counts which means it will be a bad hay fever seasons. Below I’ve listed some information about hay fever treatments that may be helpful. 

As always, if you would like to know more please come in and speak with one of our pharmacists:

• Steroid style nasal sprays such as Flixonase or Nasonex can be up to 30% more effective in controlling hay fever symptoms than antihistamine tablets. If you’ve not considered using this type of nasal spray to treat hay fever it may be worth considering.
• Antihistamine tablets, whilst being a very good treatment option, may not provide adequate relief when used alone for up to 1 out every 3 hay fever suffers. We can add in additional treatments to make them more effective.
• Ethical Nutrients Sinus and Hayfever relief is a medically proven natural supplement that can help prevent and control hay fever symptoms. It is a useful alternative or additional treatment.

Rinsing the nasal passages with a normal saline rinse such as Flo twice daily during allergy season can reduce symptoms by up to 30%. Doing this can also make steroid style nasal sprays work much more effectively.

Do you dispose of your unwanted medicines correctly?

This is a remarkably important question given that the impact on our environment is far more dramatic than you probably imagine.

There is mounting evidence that unwanted medicines that end up in

landfill (they’ve been put into rubbish bins) or that go down the drain actually end up back in our aquatic ecosystems. It follows that they can then end up in our plant and animal food sources.

Recent analysis of the water in Sydney Harbour found detectable levels of 7 different commonly used medicines. There is strong belief this would be reflected across the water bodies in all major cities in Australia.

This highlights just how important it is to dispose of old medicines correctly. For the record, the lowest environmental impact disposal method is high temperature incineration. There is a national system that is run through every community pharmacy in Australia to dispose of unwanted medicines in this way. So, the moral of the story is don’t throw or flush your old medicines, take them back to the pharmacy.

Codeine becoming script only

From 1 February 2018, you will no longer be able to buy codeine over the counter, you will need a prescription. This will affect commonly used OTC products including Panadeine, Nurofen Plus, Mersyndol, Dolased, Analgesic with Calmative and all of their generic versions. This is happening as a result of the TGA adopting a view that the benefits people obtain from having codeine so readily available are far outweighed by the issues caused through misuse. As is often the case in these situations, those who use these products appropriately and in the intended way are penalised because of those who don’t.

Given the change of law is going to happen, if you are a user of these products it is probably worth getting a plan together of how you will manage your analgesic requirements. The options are:

• Change to an analgesic product that is codeine free. We can assist you with your options in regard to this. It is worth being aware that the codeine in OTC analgesics only contributes 10% to the pain killing effect at best. So for most people, the codeine won’t be missed.

• See your doctor and get a prescription for the product you are using. As these will all be private scripts your doctor can use their judgement to provide whatever quantity and number of repeats they deem appropriate.

If you have any concerns about this or would like more information please come in and speak with one of our pharmacists.

Hayfever is in the air

Baldivis Pharmacy

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