How to deal with flowering allergies. Doctor’s advice

Allergist-immunologist at the European Medical Center

How to cope with allergy symptoms? Why do allergies to blossoms appear?

Spring is traditionally a difficult period for people suffering from seasonal allergies. There is practically no region in the world that does not face reactions to blossoms. However, today there are ways to combat this problem.

Why allergies to blooms occur

Many of us feel that our health deteriorates in spring: watery and itchy eyes, runny nose. However, there is no fever or body aches, typical for flu and acute respiratory viral infections. Most likely, you are faced with allergic rhinitis or conjunctivitis, which are caused by plant pollen.

Why does an allergic reaction to blooms occur? A foreign agent, in our case pollen, gets on the mucous membranes of the nose, eyes, respiratory tract. No threat to health pollen does not carry, but the body reacts to it with the inclusion of certain mechanisms, thereby responding to the impact of the allergen. This is how unpleasant symptoms arise. Sometimes they are similar to a common cold. But they can be more serious, up to choking attacks.

Depending on the region, flowering periods differ. For example, in Moscow, depending on the air temperature, it lasts from about mid-March to early June. During this period, according to the flowering calendar, the pollen of alder, birch, chestnut, maple and hazel is especially active.

What to do to relieve allergy symptoms

To reduce the severity of unpleasant symptoms in allergies, it is enough to follow simple recommendations.

• Do not be patient and do not wait for a runny nose, cough or itchy skin to go away on its own – relieve unpleasant symptoms.
• Ask your doctor for recommendations. Although you can buy over-the-counter anti-allergy medications at the drugstore, a specialist will prescribe medications that will help with your symptoms.
• Follow a diet when advised to do so by your doctor, this can also help alleviate symptoms. From a biological point of view, many plants have similar allergenic structures, so a reaction may occur not to one of them, but to the whole “family group”.

• Do not forget to do wet cleaning at home, try to use air conditioning, and do not open the windows. Go for a walk mainly after rain, as in dry weather pollen spreads more actively.

Is it possible to “cure” allergies?

And finally, you can be treated – today, doctors perform allergen-specific immunotherapy (ASIT), which helps to get rid of unpleasant symptoms. With the help of this therapy, you can reduce the body’s sensitivity to the allergen and in the long run get rid of the symptoms.

First, the doctor performs a thorough diagnosis and accurately determines the allergens for ASIT. This can be done by blood tests or skin tests. Then, before the onset of flowering, the patient begins to take special drugs (can be presented in the form of tablets, drops, injections). As a result, the immune system adapts, and this can reduce the severity of allergic reactions.

The duration of ASIT, as a rule, is 3-5 years. Thanks to the use of this method, unpleasant symptoms can be avoided altogether.