BATON ROUGE, LA – Allergies… for people who suffer from them, it can be irritating. We most commonly hear about spring allergies, but fall is less than a month away.
“Well, if you’re talking about fall allergies or seasonal allergies, usually you’re talking about respiratory symptoms, eye, ear, nose throat symptoms, like sneezing, runny nose, stopped up nose, itching eyes, watery eyes,” said Dr. Joseph Redhead, an allergist at the Baton Rouge Clinic.
In this week’s Women’s Wellness, we are talking about fall allergies.
“In the fall, you’re usually exposed to different types of weeds, like ragweed pollen and mold counts are typically higher in the fall, but they are also present in the spring,” explained Dr. Redhead. “Springtime allergies are usually tree pollen first, and then later in the spring, grass pollen.”
Dr. Redhead said anyone can get them, no matter your age, race, or gender, but some more than others.
“Probably younger people get more allergies than older people, but probably not a gender bias. Anyone can develop allergies and you can develop them at any time in life,” said Dr. Redhead.
Something you may not know…
“And then, actually, many of our patients are allergic to cockroaches as well. That’s a well known allergen in this part of the country, just droppings and their body parts become part of the house dust and over time that may cause allergies,” said Dr. Redhead.
So, how do you treat them?
“Once you’ve tried to avoid what’s causing your allergies then you can use medicines. Medicines will block the symptoms or blunt the symptoms of allergies, but they will not cure the allergies at all. They merely treat the symptoms. Some medicines are designed to give quick relief or temporary relief of symptoms, that would be allergy pills or eye drops perhaps,” said Dr. Redhead. “Many of those are already over-the-counter. People that have long term or severe symptoms usually do better with a suppressive type medicine, and there are a couple of those as well, but they must be used on a constant basis to control the allergies.”
If you’re an allergy sufferer, we have some resources for you, just head to the links below:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/allergies.htm
http://www.aafa.org/page/allergy-facts.aspx