Why Kate Could Finally Ride Horse With William And The Children
Way back in 2009 Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, revealed that she was allergic to horses and since then has been a known fact for fans. Well, what they might not know is that Kate is trying to overcome her allergy so that she might be able to one day ride alongside her husband Prince William and their three children: George, Charlotte and Louis.
While at a polo match with Australian author Kathy Lette, the royal revealed her issues. When asked about why she doesn’t play herself, Kate simply replied with: “I’m allergic to horses.”
Then in 2011, two years later, Clarisa Ru, wife of Santa Barbara Polo Club president Wesley Ru, revealed that the royal was trying to overcome her allergy through exposure-also referred to as immunotherapy.
“I got a chance to have a conversation with Kate,” she said. “I asked if she was into polo before she met William. She said no. But she’s been riding horses for a while and she hopes to play polo one day. She said, ‘I’m actually allergic to them, but the more time one spends with them the less allergic you become’.”
And that is a proven fact. Exposing yourself to allergens from horses works in the same way as immunotherapy, with the NHS explaining the whole process as “being given occasional small doses of the allergen” with the aim “to help your body get used to the allergen so it does not react to it so severely”.
However, no matter how much exposure and immunotherapy Kate might undergo, this will not mean that she will overcome her allergy entirely.
“This will not necessarily cure your allergy,” the NHS states. “But it’ll make it milder and mean you can take less medicine.”
The process also takes time, as they usually recommend that you expose yourself “over the course of several years”, which might be the reason why we still haven’t seen Kate riding a horse despite it being over 10 years since she started this form of treatment.
Let hope that one day in the near future we will see the full Cambridge family riding together.