Your eyes itch, your nose is running, you’re sneezing, and you’re covered in hives. It’s allergy season again, and all you want to do is curl up into a ball of misery.
There has to be something you can do to feel better. After all, doctors seem to have a cure for everything, right? Not for allergies. But there are ways to relieve allergy symptoms or avoid getting the symptoms, even though you can’t actually get rid of the allergies themselves.
Allergies are abnormal immune system reactions to things that are typically harmless to most people. When you’re allergic to something, your immune system mistakenly believes that this substance is harmful to your body. (Substances that cause allergic reactions, such as certain foods, dust, plant pollen, or medicines, are known as allergens.) In an attempt to protect the body, the immune system produces IgE antibodies to that allergen. Those antibodies then cause certain cells in the body to release chemicals into the bloodstream, one of which is histamine (pronounced: his-tuh-meen).
Are you allergic to something? How did you figure out the cause of your allergy? What do you do to prevent it from happening?