Q. From the last 10 years, I am suffering from allergies. Please help.

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Hello,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

I can understand your concerns. Having allergy can cause a lot of discomfort in life, affect the quality of life, and result in anxiety and depression eventually. But, you need not worry. We have solutions for allergy.

• First, let us understand how allergy occurs. Allergy is due to the hypersensitivity of your body to certain proteins present in the atmosphere, which normally do not harm other people. In your case, there is nasal hyper-reactivity. Hence the symptoms of nasal allergy, sneezing, running nose, nasal congestion, etc. The hyper-reactivity causes excessive production of inflammatory mediators and secretions, which trickles down the throat and cause throat irritation and eventually throat infection.
• Allergy is genetic, which means it is inherited. But with careful avoidance and appropriate treatment, allergy can be kept to a bare minimum with little or no affect on the quality of life of the individual. In your case, you must try every means to avoid the allergy. More importantly, we must diagnose the substances or proteins that you are allergic to. This can be done via two methods.
• Allergic skin prick test, which involves placing of a drop of allergen on your skin and pricking with a small minute needle is the gold standard for the diagnosis of specific allergy.
• Comprehensive allergy profile by an ImmunoCAP method, which is a blood test. It involves withdrawal of an adequate blood sample like any blood test and checking of allergens in that sample. The second one requires only one prick and produces less discomfort to the patient.
• Once we know the offending allergens, we can give you specific advice on how to avoid these allergens and what seasons these are more prevalent. In that way, your exacerbations of allergy will come to a minimum. If, however, you are unable to avoid these substances, then you may undergo immunotherapy. It is like vaccination and gives excellent results and an almost permanent cure from allergy.
• Till we diagnose and institute the above, the only way you can prevent allergy is to take antihistamines and Leukotriene antagonist, namely Fexofenadine 120 mg or Levocetirizine 5 mg with Montelukast 10 mg. The brand names of these drugs are, Montair-Fx, Allegra-M, Levocet-M, FM 24, etc.
• Additionally, you may take Flomist nasal (Fluticasone) spray or Metaspray nasal spray (Mometasone), to prevent local inflammation inside the nasal cavities. Avoidance of allergen is of prime importance. You should make a note of instances and occurrences of allergy so that you know what causes allergy, what time it is worse, which substances and locations you get the symptoms more than others, and accordingly avoid these areas. You may use masks to prevent entry of air into your nose and thereby lungs.

• Nasal allergy in some patients can lead to asthma, which is a corollary but occurs mainly in the lower respiratory passages. Asthma is more discomforting to the patient and requires medicines in the form of inhalers etc.

• Regarding the benefit of turmeric and other herbal medicines, I am not sure, they are not scientific. But if you are feeling improvement with those, you may continue those. Do revert for any further help. If you have done any blood investigations or tests kindly attach those in your next query.

# Harsha

Good to know that you are having improvement with these medicines. The blood test is called Comprehensive Allergy Profile (it measures allergen specific IgE). It is just a single test that gives reports for all allergens being tested. I must however tell you that skin prick testing is the gold standard for allergy testing. If you stay at Delhi, then I can suggest places where you can get the testing done.

However the most important thing is, when you are taking the allergy medications the test will come negative. You must stop allergy tablets 1 week prior to the test for it to show correct values.

Do let us know the progress.
Dr. Shyam Kalyan N

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