Allergy Season Is in Full Swing. Here’s What Medical Professionals Want You to Know. | Pittsburgh Magazine

PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

No matter how bad they may seem this spring after a fairly mild winter, seasonal allergies are easily treatable through a variety of methods.

Local pharmacist Amanda Jaber Merranko, manager of UPMC Community Pharmacies, says antihistamines are usually the go-to medication, but people can try other remedies even before medication.

First, you should make sure you’re doing everything you can to prevent pollen from entering your home.

“Keeping your home sealed is actually important,” Merranko says. That means keeping windows and doors shut and ensuring they’re sealed properly.

Second, daily saline rinses can help to get irritants out of your nose, just make sure you’re using pure distilled water or saline solution that comes with a neti pot, not tap water, she says.

Common medications include Benadryl, Allegra, and Claritin, which are all antihistamines (histamine is a chemical released by our immune systems that cause allergy symptoms). Benadryl has a reputation for causing drowsiness, Merranko says, so it’s not ideal for regular daytime use.

Antihistamines also come in the form of eye drops, and those are good for patients with itchy or watery eyes, Merranko says.

Merranko says people often ask her if the generic version of the medication is OK.

“Generic is always fine,” she says. “There’s a significant savings to using generic drugs.”

Using a nasal spray in conjunction with an anti-histamine is also a good idea, she says, but it’s important to consider the timing and the technique. Nasal steroid sprays take a couple of weeks to get to their full efficacy, she says, so starting them a few weeks before allergy season can help. For technique, you should sniff the spray gently so it stays in your sinuses.

“If you are spraying it up your nose and you can taste it or can feel it coming down the back of your throat, you sniffed way too hard,” she says.

“As always, it’s important to contact your doctor if your symptoms are severe or don’t improve or get worse but these affordable strategies are a good place to start,” she adds.

Dr. Desha Jordan, a specialist in Pediatric Allergy and Immunology at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, says it’s important to know that what you have is actually allergies. If you’re experiencing symptoms and you tried an antihistamine but it didn’t seem to be working, an allergist can narrow down the issue. Nose sprays, however, are helpful even without allergies though, she notes, because they treat inflammation.

Allergists can do allergy tests (usually scratch tests, not needles) and narrow down what’s bothering the patient. Sometimes pediatric patients come to the doctor with a chronic cough and they think it’s allergies, but it’s actually asthma.

“It’s helpful if we find out, hey, you thought your whole life you had allergies but we tested you and you didn’t,” she says.

“Allergists can help you figure out what medicines are helpful for you.”