Aggravating Allergies
Over the past few days, I’ve started to see a few more spring allergy symptoms.
It seems a little early, but with the weather warming up a bit, a few sensitive folks have started having a runny nose, sneezing, and some watery eyes. It isn’t bad yet, but it’s a harbinger of things to come.
For people with allergies, Missouri is Misery
Unfortunately for allergy sufferers, we here in Missouri have one of the worst allergy climates in the country. The main culprit in a bad case of seasonal allergic rhinitis is pollen.
The confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, and our location in the middle of the country, give us all of the allergens. We have tree pollens that appear in the spring, covering our cars in yellow dust. Flowers and grasses grow all summer, filling the air with tiny bits that make us sneeze. And then as the summer weather heats up, ragweed fills the air, increasing our misery.
Your body treats pollen as a foreign invader when it gets into your eyes and nose, and activates its defense systems to get rid of it. Your eyes water and your nose runs to flush things out, because your body thinks the pollen is a germ that’s going to make you sick.
The advice we doctors give our patients is to take antihistamines and use nasal sprays to manage their symptoms. Some folks with more severe reactions need prescription medicines to help them, and a few even need allergy shots to help them deal with their suffering. Beyond that, doctors are often at a loss to come up with actions that can help.
But there’s another culprit as well: indoor environmental allergens
This doesn’t come up as often, as it should, but you can be allergic to dust mites, pet dander, and pest droppings (like mice and cockroaches) and those things can make allergies flare up, too.
Indoor allergens are around all year long. It’s likely if you have one of these allergies that your body is in a constant state of alert. But maybe you don’t realize it because you only have symptoms that coincide with seasonal allergies.
If this is the case, it takes less of a nudge to push you over your symptom threshold when spring allergy season flares up. Dust mites alone might not bother you, and pollen alone might not bother you, but when both happen at the same time, your allergy symptoms flare up.
You may be sensitive to more than one allergen. As long as you stay under your symptom threshold (as in the graphic on the left), you don’t experience symptoms. But if you are exposed to a combination of allergens, or the severity of allergens increases to put you over your threshold (middle graphic), then your symptoms kick in. We need to identify your allergies, and then work to reduce your exposures to get you back down below your symptom threshold (graphic on right).
So what can we do about allergies?
It’s easy to test for these allergies through a simple blood test. These tests are readily available, and cheap. I can order them for you with no trouble at all! A panel of allergy tests that check for common indoor allergens is less than $75, and might be completely covered by insurance.
And, unlike skin testing for allergens, you won’t have dozens of tiny, irritating injections. And no risk of anaphylactic reactions.
Once we know your allergy profile and triggers, I can help you come up with a plan to manage them.
I am no stranger when it comes to allergy season. There’s a reason I run my air conditioner starting in March — to keep the pollen out of the house, because my kids have horrible allergies! But we’ve learned that by testing for indoor allergies, we can take simple steps that make allergic rhinitis just a little easier to manage.
I’d love to have you stop by the office and talk allergies with you. It’s one of my favorite things to talk about and treat. If you’re a patient of mine and interested, let’s talk. This kind of discussion is the reason I’m here! And if you’re not a patient yet, why not fill out our interest form and schedule a quick intro chat? I’ll be glad to talk to you about how I might be able to help with your allergy symptoms and so much more.
Have a nice spring! Remember it’s only six months until fall. 🙂
