Everybody brushes off the occasional sickness. Sometimes your symptoms just don’t feel worth going to the doctor for. But knowing when to take action is crucial to protecting your overall health.
Let’s take a look at a few common allergy symptoms and why you should schedule an allergy test.
Common Allergy Symptoms
A few allergy symptoms to look out for include:
- Hives. Hives are an itchy skin rash composed of red bumps or splotches. Acute hives go away quickly, sometimes in a matter of hours, and chronic hives last a lot longer. Hives can arise from contact with an allergen, like pollen, or ingestion of an allergen, like a food or medication.
- Swelling. Swelling of your face, mouth, tongue or throat is common with food allergies. If swelling is severe or causes trouble breathing, seek emergency medical care.
- Trouble breathing. Trouble breathing, wheezing or coughing are serious reactions to environmental allergens like pollen, mold, pet dander and dust.
- Anaphylaxis. Anaphylaxis is a life-threatening allergic reaction presenting with shortness of breath, inability to swallow, hives, swelling, cramps, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, faintness, a drop in blood pressure and an increased heart rate. While you may not present with all these symptoms, they are serious and require immediate action with an epinephrine autoinjector (EpiPen) and medical care.
- Itchy or watery eyes. Itchy or watery eyes aren’t usually a severe symptom, but can cause irritation and swelling of the skin around the eyes.
How Will an Allergy Test Help Me?
Allergy testing is crucial in helping you manage your allergy symptoms. A test reveals which allergens you’re sensitive to and how severe the sensitivity is. You can use this information to construct a treatment plan. Standard treatment options include:
- Avoidance. Avoidance involves limiting your exposure to the allergens you’re sensitive to. For example, if you’re allergic to pet dander, you’ll want to wait for a hypoallergenic pet to go up for adoption at the Atlanta Humane Society.
- Medication. Allergy medication provides short-term relief for allergy symptoms. Medication is a great option for allergies that aren’t too serious. You can pick it up at most drugstores.
- Immunotherapy. Allergy immunotherapy is a long-term treatment option to desensitize the immune system to allergens. Immunotherapy is administered as a series of shots over three to five years.
- EpiPen®. An EpiPen is an emergency injector only used to treat anaphylaxis. If you have severe allergies, most commonly food allergies, you should have at least one EpiPen. EpiPens are prescription only, so you will need to talk to your allergy specialist about getting one.
If you’ve been dealing with allergy symptoms but haven’t sought help, contact ENT of Georgia North today to schedule your allergy test.
