If you’ve tried allergy medication and eliminating allergens as much as possible from your life but continue suffer with allergies, you may want to consider immunotherapy.

Understanding Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy is a process of receiving injections with your particular allergen(s) so that your body will produce antibodies to ward of your reaction to them. The doctor will start with a small dose and increase it until you start to show a reaction. This can mean that you receive two injections a week for a month. Once at the proper dosage, you may have to return for an injection weekly for a certain amount of months determined by your doctor.

The Benefits of This Allergy Relief

Immunotherapy can save you a lot of grief and money because once you have built up the antibodies; you will no longer have a reaction to your allergens.  You’ll finally find relief from the allergies you suffered with for years. However, for some people, a booster injection is required a few years later.

The Cost of Immunotherapy

Unfortunately, since immunotherapy isn’t considered pharmaceuticals, many insurance companies will not cover the cost. To pay out of pocket, you are looking at about $1,000 for the first year and the second year in which you only get a couple injections a month may run you about $350. If you are not able to afford immunotherapy, shop around because doctors vary in pricing. Also, you can contact your state’s allergy society for information on low or no-cost immunotherapy in your area.

Photo: Sarah G

I think I’ve mentioned before that I live in Florida? Where the state tree is (or should be) the pine tree. I’m not allergic, thankfully, but I’ve been thinking about how horrible it would be if I were. Let me illustrate with a few examples. During pine tree pollen season, my screened porch gets coated yellow. Not just the screen but the bench inside of it as well. By green truck turns yellow. Do you know how much pollen you have to put on green to turn it green? A lot. Finally, we are thinking about building a screened in pool and the pool builders have told us that during ‘pine season’ we’ll have to skim the top of the pool daily if we don’t want to swim in pollen even with the screening. One last example; a friend of mine left her windows open on a nice day. There were window screens and she figured everything would be fine. Oh no. The rooms with the windows open had to be completely cleaned because of the coating of pine pollen. All of these examples make me wonder, how does anyone with a pine pollen allergy live anywhere in Florida and maintain any kind of good health?(or any other state with lots of pine trees). Someone clue me in?

Photo Credit: Dbaron

A friend of mine has a kind of odd allergy. Well she calls it an allergy but it’s more of a chemical reaction I guess. She is allergic to chlorine. If chlorine touches her skin she breaks out into what looks like hives except they may remain for weeks instead of hours. She has to wear rubber gloves if she wants to use chlorine for anything and even being in a swimming pool for extended periods  can cause this horrible reaction. Sometimes if she is bleaching towels, she will even have a minor reaction. I can’t even believe how hard it is on her. So many cleaning products have bleach in them and she is something of a clean freak.

As in she’s the type of person who use to notice when I would go in and move her stapler a few nudges to the side on her desk. Before she realized what was causing the reaction she’d use bleach in everything. Since she’s figured it out her overall health has been much better. Although her happiness has decreased (after all nothing is really clean without bleach, right?) Do you have any allergies, or in this case chemical reactions that are less common? How do you cope with it?

Photo Credit: Ksionic

People who have dust mite allergies should also be wary of cockroaches. Apparently cockroaches are cross allergenic with dust mites, so if you’re allergic to one you might be allergic to the other. No one wants to think there are roaches in their house, but they’re more common than most people would like to think. Check out more info in this article: http://www.lungdiseasefocus.com/articles/about-asthma/asthma-pollution.php

Plant pollination occurs every spring, summer, and fall. The pollen grains released by trees, grasses, and weeds cause illness and suffering in over 40 million Americans. Pollen forecasts measure the amount and types of pollen present in the air, providing allergy sufferers the knowledge of when to avoid being outside.

Learn more about pollen forecasts in this article.

No matter what food allergy you have it will play havoc with your health. It is completely unreal to me how many problems you run into when you have to avoid one food. I’ve mentioned my onion allergy which is somewhat random but after I made breakfast this morning (eggs and toast if you were wondering) I started thinking about how horrible it would be to have an egg allergy. Eggs are in everything.

It turns out that egg allergies usually affect the kiddos but that many outgrow it by the time they are five. Also, it is the protein in either the yolk or the white that causes the allergic reaction but usually not both. I mean if you think about the common items that have egg in them, pasta, cake, bread, mayonnaise, frostings, salad dressing, and even some drinks! People who are super sensitive even have to be careful of some vaccines, shampoos, and cosmetics. It boggles the mind, well at least my mind. One good thing, good being relative, is that in America food manufacturers have to clearly label whether food has egg in it or if it was made in a facility that ever processes eggs. I know, small comfort.

When looking at ingredient lists remember they may not say ‘egg’ or ‘egg product’, also be suspicious of anything starting with ova or ovo and ingredients such as:
albuminate

Albumin

Globulin

Lecithin

Livetin

lysozyme

vitelin

If you, or your child, has an egg allergy what is the most surprising eggy food you have found?

Photo Credit: Annie Mole

Latex is something most people take for granted. Your doctor and dentist wear latex gloves when treating you and the versatile stuff is in lots of common products like balloons, toys, pacifiers, bandages, adhesive tape, and condoms. However, if you have a latex allergy it can be very serious.

Mild Latex allergy symptoms:

• Coughing
• Hives
• Itchy eyes
• Rash
• Sneezing

Severe latex allergy symptoms:

• Confusion
• Difficulty breathing
• Dizziness
• Irregular pulse
• Nausea
• Vomiting

This is one of those allergies that you need to wear an identification alert for because latex is so common, especially in a hospital. If you are in an accident and you are unable to communicate you will be taken to a hospital. If there is no way for the doctors to know you are allergic to latex you could get a high amount of exposure before they notice a reaction or before you are able to tell them. As with any allergy severity can increase so what is a mild annoyance today could turn life threatening tomorrow.

How do I know all of this? I have a mild latex allergy. The tape they use to stick cotton balls to your arm after you donate blood cause hives on which is how I found out. Short term exposure like when a doctor is wearing latex gloves doesn’t bother me…yet. But according to my doctor it could, so I try to be careful.

Do you have a latex allergy? How do you handle it?

Photo Credit: Neeta Lind

I hate how I can never seem to go outside during the spring without sneezing and having itchy eyes, yet my best friend can be outside all day and never have any symptoms. Why do some people experience allergies, while others seem to be fine during pollen season? And what can I do to control my runny nose, itchy eye and sneezing without taking medications?

In any case there are some interesting points in this article.

I’ve mentioned before that as a student I had serious health problems as a result of allergens in my old school. By old school I don’t mean the school I went to before I mean the building was old. My dad went to school there. My problems as an adult teacher weren’t as severe because I worked in a newer school and I was on allergy medication. However, my experiences as a student stuck with me and there are a few things I’d like to remind parents about.

If your child doesn’t have a temperature and the only symptoms are sniffles and a headache it may be allergies. If it is allergies the symptoms won’t get better on their own and your child may need to take medication to control the symptoms. This is an important distinction because I see parents that react in two ways to allergy symptoms. They either think their child has swine flu (or whatever bad bug is going around that year) or they think nothing is wrong.

Obviously worrying that your child has the worst bug imaginable can be a nightmare, but pretending nothing is wrong is just as bad. If your child feels bad all the time and has a headache and is constantly distracted by a runny nose then he or she is going to have a hard time concentrating and learning. Please pay attention to what your child is telling you and let your doctor figure out what is wrong with the child and if there is anything that can be done to help him or her. I promise there will be years of thanks in it for you.

Photo Credit Michael D Martin

This article talks about what triggers hay fever and what to do about it. Hay fever actually doesn’t have anything to do with hay, nor does it cause a fever—in fact, it’s another common name for a pollen allergy. As anyone with allergies knows, they can greatly affect your everyday life, but fortunately, there are many things you can do to alleviate it.