pollen allergy

Family, Education, Health and Pets
1
hello all...

i m living in switzerland for 3 years with my husband and my 2 year old son. My husbnd is here for 5 years and after 2 years he developed pollen allergy. now every spring it gets worse ( starts so early ). this year after completing my 3 years here i m also experiencing some of the symptoms of pollen allergy , though not very strong. I am concerned about my son. He is 2 years old and this is his 3rd spring here. Is he also susceptible to pollen allergy in near future? Does anyone know anything i can do to protect him from this so that he will not get this allergy? Also does anyone know any effective way or treatment to fight this allergy.......

note:We are an Indian family and my son was born in switzerland.

please dont hesitate to reply with whatever u know!

thanks all

2
The likelyhood of your son getting pollen allergy in the future is unfortunatelly pretty high if both you and your husband have it. Not much you can do to protect him really. Good thing is that pollen allergy is usually not life threatening. It's a pain but symptoms can be pretty well treated with anti-histamines.

3
You need to clean your home and keep the windows closed. You can buy pollen flter material to fit in the window frames, we bought ours 3 years ago in Manor.

Avoiding pollen: When you come home take a shower and wash your hair, put on clean clothes. Wear a hat outside, on bad days you might wear a medical mask outside.

Visit your doctor, there are many treatments available.

4
Try putting some petroleum jelly under and around the nose area and advise them to try and breath through their mouth as much as they can.

5
There are some quite effective nasal sprays, also for children. I've used Livostin nasal spray and eye drops in the past and Beconase is widely used.

I usually get it pretty bad round April/May (damn Birch) and the past 2 years have had quite nasty allergic conjunctivitus, probably as I wasn't using the drops as prescribed . This year I have been more judicious with the drops and my conjunctivitus hasn't been nearly as bad, despite the warm dry weather and high pollen counts. Been sneezing like an idiot though.

6
Well, he will most likelly not get it until he is much older. It usually doesn't start before the children are around 8-9 years old.

Younger children usually only shows symptoms against food, such as milk and egg and then it move over to pollen as they get older. The likelyhood of asthma increases if the child also has food allegies.

One thing that has shown to give some protection against allergies is exposure to upper respiratory infections during early childhood. Also growing up on a farm seem to give some protection.

7
a lot of people say that a spoon full of local honey taken every day works wonders, I have only just found local honey here and allergy season was in full swing by the time I bought it so I can't really say if it works but I think it is worth a try. I bought it in the reformhaus in hauptbahnhof

8
I was also going to suggest this - but it has to be locally produced flower/blumen (not woodland/wald) honey, from bees kept in the area, which have "visited" local flowers. It is only really effective against flower pollen allergy, and probably negligible against tree and grass varieties.

I believe the principle works in a similar way to immunisation - by having a small dose of the allergy cause, helps the body fight the stronger exposure.

Can't truly comment on how effective it is as my daughter, who suffers the worst, doesn't eat honey, apart from the occasional squirt of supermarket generic runny honey on pancakes. My wife, suffers from mild symptoms only and usually takes a daily spoonful, and seems to sneeze a bit less.

9
Further to Ittigen's advice, I recommend wearing large (wrap-around) sunglasses whenever you are outdoors during the day.

If you can't wash your hair everyday (I certainly can't, daily washing turns my hair into a stringy mess), make sure you brush it out well before going to bed. And try not to leave worn clothes in the bedroom, as this will only cause further irritation during the night.

10
yes u r right. my hsbnd already got it from a farmhouse and takes it regularly. initially it was very helpful, but this month as the spring is in full bloom it seems to b less effective. but still i wud say my hsbnd is much better than last year bcoz he started taking this local pollen gemischt honey early, i think in february end or so.

11

hey u mentioned immunisation........does anyone know how effective is the immunisation against pollen allergy?

12
De-sensitization needs to be started around October. You will have many skin tests and then the personal immunisation compound is created and you receive about 50 injections, one about 3 times per week. The treatments gradually increase and at the end you receive large doses which are painful, and you are watched as there is a chance of you collapsing!

This also helps with animal and some food allergies.

Your doctor can better advise you. I took de-sentising treatments for 2 years, and these have helped me a lot. I nowadays just take one Zyrtec pill before bed time and I am almost symptom free.

.

13
You can't immunise exactly. In fact, it is the anti-pollen antibodies (IgE) which cause all the problems by stimulating immune cells to release histamines.

What you can do is desensitise, by being administered small, controlled doses of the allergen until your body is accustomed to it and no longer produces the antibodies when you are exposed to it during the seaon. You should maybe make an appointment with a local allergologist.

14

The thing about allergies is that what is going on is that your own immune system is "over reacting" to whatever it is that is triggering it (pollen, food, chemicals, whatever)... so most of the remedies are either something that LOWERS your immunity altogether (hence the risk of sinus infection from some allergy medicines) OR they work to "desensitize" your system to the trigger by giving you tiny amounts over time.

I haven't found anything myself to be 100% effective and the remedies which have been the most effective for me do carry some heavy side effects too.

Probably the "best" thing at this point, particularly for your little one, is to try using the local honey to help desensitize you all to your local triggers.

Another "simple" thing to do is to try to avoid some of the ones that are avoidable. Certain foods (fruits and veg) have the same family of proteins as some of the plants and flowers that are triggers... among the theories involving this is that perhaps by avoiding eating those things, it will help lower the allergic response to things less easily avoided (the blowing pollen). For example, if you know that you and your husband have a reaction to birch pollen, it may help lessen the symptoms if you avoid eating apples, apricots, bananas, avocado, peppers, etc etc ("whole" list on that link).

Conversely, you may experience symptoms when eating those things that are linked to that pollen allergy, you may get a mildly "itchy" feeling in your mouth, throat and ears. So, pay attention to whether you are having these feelings and it will help you to figure out what pollens are bothering you.

Unfortunately, only using my own family as example, heredity isn't a "guarantee" of knowledge regarding what your little one may be allergic to either. Some of my family members have allergies to animals, some (incl me) do not have this, some of them have this sensitivity to certain foods but don't seem to suffer from hayfever so intensely and others it is vice-versa... and for many of us, it is different things. HOWEVER, the older I get, the more my triggers are very similar to what bothers my father. (My mom has none so it's hard to say... I do not seem to share the same triggers that I know her brothers exhibit though.)

15
Just to clarify - I was referring to the principle behind immunisation in general, and not specifically relating to pollen allergies - of which I have no knowledge.

16
In the UK my family took the Piriton tablets, an antihistamine, for hayfever. This contains chlorphenamine maleate. I haven't been able to find this product in Switzerland. Is Zentech similar? I would welcome any suggestions.

17
Chlorphenamine (= chlorpheniramine) maleate was a 1st generation antihistamine. I took it in the 'sixties and 'seventies. It was a fairly effective sleeping pill too. I don't know if such stuff is still available in Switzerland. It sure is in the USA. I'd never use it if I had to drive a car or the like or had to do work where attention really matters.

These days, the meds of choice are 2nd and 3rd generation products, with way fewer and less severe side effects. I use a Zyrtec generic (active ingredient: cetirizine) if necessary, which has been the case lately because of the very dry weather.

18
Yep, yep, that's available here although the folks at the pharmacy tend to look at me funny when I've requested it because it is so "old school"... it helps me "best" though but it definitely does make me some sleepy and such. Here I was only needing to take one pill every morning , rather than the 4x daily, and was fine through the day. Given the choice between personifying Sleepy vs Sneezy dwarf, I go for Sleepy any day.

I want to say that the stuff I got here with that in it was called Rhrinopront but I'm unsure. Simply take your box with you to the pharmacy, maybe highlight the active ingredients on the box, and show it to them, they can look up what they've got.

My doc has me on Zyrtec now, it's not working quite well enough for me. Then again, the pollen is quite fierce right now, the amount of visible pollen on the ground reminds me of Florida.

(Have appointment to check back with doc regarding new meds next week, hopefully he'll agree to some changes.)

19
A wonderful thing that really helps me combat dealing with allergies (over 10 years now) is a nasal/sinus rinse. One teaspoon (non-iodized if possible) salt to a cup of water (does not need to be exact, just experiment). You can use a normal mug and sniff, or a neti pot, or purchase a Neil Med bottle (works great) available in many pharmacy's I believe. I have used all the over the counter and prescription meds out there almost; the nasal rinse (twice a day) is the BEST! Take care!

20
I have had hayfever very badly for over 20 years. Since I moved away from the sea.

This year my hayfever wasn't anyway near as bad as it normally is. I have taken 3 tablets in total, and just used the eye drops you get over the counter. Normally I have tablets, eye drops, nasal spray and ear drops, all from a specialist. I didn't understand why but was very grateful.

Early this year for completely different reasons I started drinking Green Tea and eating an orange for Breakfast.

Then about a month ago I was reading an article in the Readers Digest about allergies and hayfever and it suggested in the article that among other things drinking Green Tea and eating an orange for breakfast helped.

It can't be psychosomatic because I didn't know about the effects until after I had noticed a reduction in my allergies.

I was really surprised, but pleased and would recommend anybody else trying it. It might not work straight away but it might be worth a try.

By the way I really hate drinking the green tea and only drink it once a day in the mornings.