The Best Medications to Tame Your Allergies
When you have seasonal allergies and want them to stop—especially if they’re accompanied by fatigue and a general blurry feeling—the last thing you want to do is stand in the drugstore or hover over what feels like a million choices online to try to figure out what’s best for you. But the guide below can help you understand what’s what.
None of these will cure your seasonal allergies, unfortunately. “You can’t eliminate allergies. But you can use medications to try to drop your response to the allergens,” says Matt Dougherty, M.D., a physician with Esse Health in St. Louis.
Which medications should you use for seasonal allergies?
Many seasonal allergy relievers that used to be available by prescription have gone over-the-counter, which is handy for you (except that way, it’s not covered by your health insurance, like many prescriptions are).
These seasonal allergy medications largely fall into two types:
Antihistamines
If you have seasonal allergies and you’re around the substance that you’re allergic to, cells called mast cells start pumping out a substance called histamine—the very substance that causes swelling and itching and all those seasonal allergy symptoms that get you down, explains Lakiea Wright, M.D., a board-certified physician in Allergy and Immunology and a practicing physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Antihistamines block that histamine cascade, allowing you to feel better.
In this category, doctors generally recommend the newer, long-acting antihistamines over the old, sedating antihistamine, diphenhydramine (Benadryl).
Look for: Claritin, Zyrtec, Allegra
Nasal Steroid Sprays
These sprays help decrease inflammation in the nasal passages. That helps calm down some of the runny/stuffy nose and itchiness you may be experiencing, explains Dr. Wright. Be aware that they take a few days to a week for you to notice a decrease in symptoms, so it’s wise with these—as with all allergy medications, actually—to start taking them a little ahead of when the substances you’re allergic to will be in the air (if you can watch the signs and predict).
You may end up taking both types of medication to control allergy symptoms, and that’s OK, doctors say.
If those medications don’t help your seasonal allergies
There’s a chance your allergy symptoms aren’t allergies at all—they could be signs of a chemical sensitivity (find out more about that here).
Or, you may need additional allergy-taming treatments like allergy shots or pills. With allergy shots, you get dosed with controlled bits of the allergen that get stronger and stronger to teach your body how to handle being exposed to it. These can be effective, but do require you going to an allergist for weekly visits, often for a few years or more.
Researchers recently developed tablets that can do a similar thing as allergy shots, and you can do them at home. The caveat: They only exist for ragweed, grass, and dust-mite allergies, so if you are bothered by other substances, you’d still need to go the more traditional allergy shot route.
To tame allergy symptoms even better
There are numerous things you can do to prevent allergies from really slamming you so badly in the first place. “The less exposure you have to allergens, the less likely you are to have symptoms,” explains Dr. Wright.
So watch pollen counts and go out when they’re lower, remove and wash your clothes and hair when you come inside (pollen is super sticky and will cling to both), and figure out what your triggers are so you can steer as clear of them as possible.
You Might Also Like