Do Natural Remedies Really Work for Allergies? Insights from Raquel Durban, RD

At the 2025 American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) Annual Scientific Meeting in Orlando, Florida, Raquel Z. Durban, RD, LD/N, a registered dietitian with the Carolina Asthma & Allergy Center, addressed a frequently overlooked topic in allergy care: the role of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in symptom management. Durban breaks down which natural remedies offer real therapeutic value and which are best left behind in the realm of wellness trends.

In her clinic, she sees many patients who have been admitted or said they are interested in using natural remedies to manage allergies.

“It's such a common part of our clinical practice, and I can always understand why they're seeking something more natural,” Durban told HCPLive. “But I think the misconception is that it will be an equivalent of what the prescribed medication or the prescribed therapy is, but in what's considered a more natural form.”

She continued by saying that while some, like turmeric, show promise in preclinical trials, many natural remedies have been studied only in mouse models. Therefore, we do not know for certain whether these remedies work well in humans—they may not.

In the past 5 years, more than 70,000 research articles on herbal medicine have been published in scientific publications. According to Market US, a 2020 survey reported that 71% of US adults used herbal supplements to support their health. Durban emphasized that while many patients are drawn to over-the-counter remedies, clinicians must help them navigate these products with both empathy and evidence.

“Clearly, they're in such a situation that they're really looking for something that can help them, and we may have been the last effort that they came to because maybe they have mistrust in their clinician that they've consulted with,” Durban said. “The first approach is meeting them with empathy and then taking a full recall of all of their medications and verifying those, as we would in clinic anyways, but then looking at what the contraindication might be for some of the herbals that they're interested in and also the side effects of some of these herbals.”

Common adverse events of these remedies include bloating, gas, itchy skin, and beef tallow. Durbin explained that patients often assume natural therapies are safer or equivalent to prescribed medications, yet the data supporting these interventions are limited.

The current preclinical data show that xylitol nasal sprays provide a modest benefit compared with saline rinses. At the same time, turmeric continues to attract research interest for its anti-inflammatory potential across allergic and atopic conditions. However, Durbin noted that the lack of standardized dosing and regulatory oversight poses ongoing challenges to determining safety and efficacy.

Durbin underscored the importance of conducting thorough medication reviews to assess for herb-drug interactions, particularly with products that can interfere with hepatic CYP enzymes, such as quercetin, as well as evaluating organ function in patients considering supplements like turmeric, which may affect liver health.

“I'm hopeful that for the participants that attend…we can lay a foundation for approaching it with a very open mind, approaching it with an empathy that this person is probably in a real pickle with the symptoms that they're experiencing and providing them with facts about what this supplement is,” Durban said.

Durban has no relevant reported disclosures.

References

1. Durban R. Natural Remedies Can Cure My Allergies – Fact Versus Fiction in Alternative Treatments. Presented at ACAAI 2025 in Orlando, Florida on Saturday, November 8, 2025.

2. Sharma A. Herbal Medicine Statistics: Revealing the Healing Power of Nature. Market.us Media. Published September 13, 2023. https://media.market.us/herbal-medicine-statistics/