Surviving Spring When You Have Seasonal Allergies

When you suffer from seasonal allergies, spring can be an especially difficult season to deal with. When all of the plants are blooming and pollen is in the air, you might feel as though there is no way that you can possibly escape the allergens that make your life miserable.

Get to know some of the ways that you can survive spring when you have seasonal allergies. Then you can be sure that you take the necessary steps to manage your allergies.

Take an Antihistamine Before Going Outdoors

One of the best things you can do for your spring allergy symptoms is to take medications to help prevent them from occurring. Antihistamines are your best defense against allergens.

If you know you will be going outside in the near future, take an antihistamine like Benadryl between thirty minutes and an hour ahead of time. This will allow the antihistamines to take effect before you are exposed to large quantities of outdoor allergens.
You may also want to take a daily antihistamine like Zyrtec or Claritin when spring arrives. Take it in the morning shortly after you get out of bed and you will be able to better cope with your allergies throughout the day.

Change Your Home’s Air Filter

When most people think about exposure to spring allergens, they think about being outdoors. However, those allergens can get inside of your home as well. The best way to combat those allergens inside of your house is to make sure you have a clean air filter as well as the right kind of air filter in your home.

As such, at the beginning of spring, you will want to change out your air filter. Replace the old one with a HEPA air filter or another version that is specifically designed to keep allergens out of the home. This will help filter out allergens that manage to sneak into your home.

Clothes as Soon as You Get Home

Once you do go outside into the allergen-filled air, you will end up with those allergens on your body. Pollen and other allergens can get into the fibers of your clothing and can easily be carried around with you throughout your day.

When you get home from being outside, no matter how long you were outdoors, it is a good idea to change clothing. The clothing that is contaminated with pollens will only make your allergy symptoms worse. Fresh, clean clothing will limit the spread of allergens throughout your home and reduce the contact they will have with your body.

Consider Allergy Injections

If your spring allergies are especially bad and you cannot function well even with the aforementioned allergy management methods, you may want to consider allergy injections to treat your seasonal allergies.

Allergy injections provide controlled exposure to allergens. This helps to build up the body’s tolerance to those allergens and reduce the severity of the body’s reaction to them. Allergy shots have been known to drastically reduce the severity of allergies.
Simply go to an allergy clinic to start with. The doctors there will perform a skin allergy test on you to determine the specific things you are allergic to. Then they will develop a serum specifically designed for your allergy shots.

Allergy shots are administered once a week or, sometimes, more frequently. While getting shots now might not help you with this spring as much, you can make sure that next spring is less of a problem than it would be if you did not receive allergy injections.
Now that you know some of the ways that you can better survive spring when you have seasonal allergies, you can contact an allergy specialist as soon as possible.