Allergies And Relief

Allergies are the cause for many different ailments, including eczema, asthma, psoriasis, hay fever and many other common disorders. If you find out what foods or common allergens you may be allergic to, then you might realize your symptoms relatively quickly. The faster you diagnose what it is you are allergic to, the sooner you can take action to help your body fight off foreign invaders. This will improve the quality of your life dramatically!

Diagnosis

We’ve touched on diagnosis of allergies throughout this guidebook. As a quick recap, most people realize they might have food or common sensitivities or allergies by the telltale symptoms they experience, which often drive them to the doctor.

Many doctor’s will order serologic testing for patients with confusing symptoms or severe reactions so they can find out the exact allergens and irritants a person is sensitive to. Other ways to find out whether you have allergies, especially food allergies, is to conduct a food elimination diet. This simple process, described earlier, will easily help you find out which foods are most likely to result in allergic reactions in your body.

Traditional Treatments

Once you identify your triggers (by a blood test or by a food elimination diet) the next step is treating your allergies. You can use medications to reduce some of your symptoms, but there are also many common sense strategies you can adopt to prevent flare-ups, especially in the spring or when your allergies result from dust mites or dander.

Food allergies are simple to treat; in most cases, you avoid the foods you are allergic to. (Don’t eat them). This may require that you start actively reading food labels, because many processed foods contain hidden ingredients. Other foods may be processed in manufacturing plants that also manufacture the foods you are sensitive to. If you have severe allergies, you may have to limit your food selections to organic foods handled and processed under very controlled environments.

The good news is because allergies are so much more common these days, you can usually easily find stores carrying special lines of food products geared toward individuals with multiple food sensitivities.

Treating common allergies is a bit trickier, though the concept behind treating them is the same. If possible you want to avoid exposure or limit your exposure to known irritants. Unfortunately, this is not always possible. Consider pollen for example. While you can’t really eliminate pollen from the world around you, you can take preventive steps to limit your exposure to pollen during peak seasons. This simple action will help limit your seasonal symptoms and improve your quality of life.

Here are a few added strategies for reducing and treating your common allergies:

1. First, remove potential allergens from your home. If you have a cat, and you are allergic to animals, then avoid owning pets. If you can’t live without your beloved pet, make a special trip to your veterinarian. Some offer new treatments that reduce pet dander.
2. Next, be sure you clean your house as often as possible, removing dust using a tool that cleans dust, not one that simply pushes it around. Wipe down surfaces with a wet cloth, or hire someone to do it for you. There are special products you can buy that eliminate dust from the house, not just push it around. You can buy certain vacuums and air filters for example, that helps eliminate dust and help keep dust from recurring.
3. Invest in a good air filter, if you can, a house-wide one, so that you eliminate most common irritants from the entire home. It is possible to create an environment where you can become virtually allergy free. While expensive, you’ll find the investment in a whole-house air filter worthwhile, even if you don’t have any “known” or suspected allergies.
4. Wash your bedding in hot water weekly, including your pillows. Toss out pillows that are more than one-year old to reduce dust mites. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they are not present.
5. If you live in a humid area, look for areas of your home where mold may be growing. Many times the simple addition of a dehumidifier may be all that is necessary to reduce the mold and mildew that can grow in your living areas. If you do find areas infested with mildew or mold, treat them.
6. In the spring or fall, keep your windows closed to prevent pollen from drifting indoors. Try avoiding walking through or visiting elaborate gardens or forests that may be plagued with allergy producing plants and flowers.
7. Use pillows with polyester instead of down or feather filled pillows, even if they are more comfortable, because down and feathers are much more likely to inspire allergic reactions than even synthetic products.
8. If you have severe allergies, try wood floors or bamboo flooring instead of wall-to-wall carpeting. Wall-to-wall carpeting increases indoor air pollution exponentially; this may be one reason so many people experience allergies nowadays, as wall-to-wall carpeting is used much more frequently than wood floors for new house construction. Carpeting can attract dust, pollen and dander, and also contains substances that pollute the environment naturally.
9. Keep carpet out of bathrooms, where it can hide mold and mildew.
10. Use an air conditioner, as this acts as a filter in its own right. If you own a swamp cooler, be sure you clean the filter you use each summer, so you don’t attract more pollutants into the air than you filter out.

Food allergies are a bit different as noted earlier. The best and usually only way to treat food allergies is to avoid the foods you are allergic to. This will require identifying the foods you are allergic to, and then avoiding them. You may have to invest in a special book that addresses your specific food allergen.

When shopping, you will have to check all labels and ingredients for hidden allergens. You may be surprised to learn for example, that many common foods have soy or soy derivatives in them. If you have a soy allergy, eating these foods may result in a flare-up.

Most processed foods are more likely to cause problems than foods in their whole, natural state. People with food allergies often do best on a diet that incorporates plenty of whole grown, fresh foods including fruits, vegetables and lean proteins. Certain grains, including buckwheat and rice, are much less allergenic and often do not contain gluten, a substance many people are allergic to.

You may find you have a combination of food and common allergies. If this is the case, you may have to adopt a lifestyle change. You may need to take prescription or over-the-counter medications to help reduce your symptoms, then also take precautions to avoid common triggers so you can live as comfortably as possible.

What We Learned

Diagnosing allergies is often an easy process. If you ingest a food and suddenly have symptoms, you can easily identify a food allergy. Sensitivities are harder to diagnose, because they may result in chronic symptoms that seem unrelated to an allergy. You may for example, experience a delayed skin reaction, or have problems sleeping.

Common allergies are often diagnosed by symptoms and by serologic testing. Your healthcare provider can help you properly diagnose the foods and environmental irritants you are allergic to using simple blood tests. Other people prefer to do their own testing using food elimination diets or other means. No matter what means you use to diagnose your allergies, it is important you discover your triggers.

Once you do, you can start treating your symptoms and preventing allergic symptoms from recurring. While you may not be able to cure allergies, you can reduce them to a minor irritant using a combination of preventive techniques and by taking regular medicines. Some people will opt for allergy shots in combination with other treatments including use of air filters and the “avoidance” technique to help limit their symptoms.

In the next section, we’ll look at some less traditional ways you can treat allergies and even prevent allergy symptoms from flaring.