Treating Your Allergies

Many patients have been using over-the-counter remedies by the time they reach our practice, but some don’t realize that allergies are the problem. Today there are many good allergy medications that used to be available by prescription only, like the anti-histamines Claritin, Zyrtec and Allegra.

But there are still prescription-only allergy medications that can help. In addition to pills, prescription nose sprays can be helpful, and when used along with anti-histamines, they can greatly improve the control of allergy symptoms.

If medications can’t control the symptoms, then allergy testing is usually the next step. Confirming the presence of allergies and determining what they are will help you avoid your allergies. We often employ a CT scanner in the office to check for sinus infection or polyps, too.

Allergy test results allow us the option of immunotherapy, a technique where a patient is made less sensitive to the things they are allergic to. For decades this has meant once-a-week allergy shots in the office. While we still give lots of allergy shots, we also provide sublingual allergy drops. Instead of coming in to the office once a week for a shot, we send you home with allergy dropper vials. A few drops placed under the tongue every day are much easier than shots.