Hey thanks so much for joining us
here on 9 News Plus I'm Christian
joined by Doctor Kyle Kohli.
Our Nine News resident medical experts,
all things expert and today Doctor Coley.
I'm going to focus in on allergies
specifically because that has
been a real topic of discussion.
A lot of irritating I can tell you first
hand I'm getting all sorts of allergies.
Been sneezing like crazy and
so kind of want to break down.
Maybe some of those ways to treat allergies.
And also maybe a bit more about
what you're experiencing and also
whether it's COVID or something else.
Kind of some of those differences,
so start things off by asking a bit more.
It is the peak of allergy season.
Right now we're in May when is typically
the kind of peak for allergy season.
One of those.
Maybe some of those worst feelings
start to drop off.
You know, I would say we
still have a couple of months.
Chris, yeah, so it's kind of the peak and
then we see some in June and by July,
which is kind of the middle of the summer.
It really does start to taper off now.
There are some people who have allergies year
round because they're allergic to household.
Things like dust mites or cockroaches,
or mold in their shower or what have you so
some people can have symptoms here around,
but the seasonal allergies where
we're talking about the pollen and
the trees and the wind blowing.
Those really do start to taper
off in the summer.
Well, it's been
a windy spring. You mentioned the wind,
does that really kick up pollen?
It really does honestly,
and for my patients that are
allergy sufferers actually tell
them to listen to Ed and watch the
forecast as to how windy it is when
they decide whether they're gonna
be doing something outdoors or
whether they maybe need to take an
extra dose of their antihistamine.
Or something preventively,
because especially if you're allergic
to pollen and a lot of people don't
know what they're allergic to.
Umm, when pollen is a big one and
you go outside and it's windy,
it's really kind of just flying
up in the air.
It's aerosolizing those pollen
particles and kind of pushing
them right up into your nose,
where they create that inflammatory reaction
did not know the win had
such an impact on allergies.
So with that in mind,
how do you know?
And this is a key question.
Obviously, right now,
how do you know if it's allergies,
it's COVID or it's something else?
What's the main difference?
This is such a difficult question.
So before we had vaccines it was easy, right?
Because the minute you have fever the
minute you have shortness of breath or
involvement of your chest or your lungs,
you know that it's COVID
and it's not allergies.
But now, with vaccines it's made it
really much more challenging because
the symptoms overlap even more,
those immune activation symptoms that we're
seeing, which is like a little fatigue,
congestion, or runny nose.
Maybe a little bit of a scratchy throat.
Those can all occur with allergies,
and with COVID now some that
specifically don't occur necessarily.
With allergies,
are muscle aches or pains so
you know when you have the flu,
you feel kind of achy and that
usually doesn't happen with
an allergy and then fever.
Similarly,
if you're starting to get a fever,
even if it's a low grade fever,
that's pretty unlikely with allergies.
But I would say 100% of the time,
even if you're an allergy
sufferer like myself,
if you are having some symptoms that
feel unusual or slightly different,
you have to get that test to
make sure that they're not real.
And it's not just the rapid
test that you can rely on.
You actually have to follow
up with the PCR test.
Especially if you think you might have
had an exposure like you're going out,
seeing your friends and what have you.
OK, good advice there probably
misdiagnosed myself with COVID
a million times this spring.
With that in mind, you were
telling me about so they called
it an amino therapy allergy shots.
So tell us a bit more about those.
Yeah, you know treatments are limited most
of the times we just treat the symptoms,
but this is actually trying to
treat the core of the problem.
What is causing the allergy in the 1st
place and what is an allergy and allergy?
Is it overreaction of your
immune system to an innocuous?
Antigen like pollen so your
immune system sees the pollen,
it thinks it's an invader and it goes
to war and it's that going to war
that actually causes the symptoms,
not the pollen itself.
So you essentially want to take
these shots to train your immune
system to stop reacting.
So what they do is they give you
escalating doses of let's say
you're allergic to a specific type
of pollen that specific pollen,
to induce the immune system
to slightly react each time,
but every time they give you a higher dose,
the immune system says, oh,
I've seen this guy before.
It's not so bad.
Let me not react as much this time,
so it's a way to sort of retrain your
immune system to not react to those antigens,
and I've personally had the allergy
shots and they kind of suck when
you get them because you do get
a reaction and your arm is the
red and itchy and what have you.
But in some people they can be very
effective in keeping those allergies and
sort of curing them in a longer term.
Are there other, more common
treatment options we should know
about? You know, so on a day to day basis
we want to take those antihistamines.
You want to be really, really careful.
Not to take anything that has a D on it.
So Claritin D or Zyrtec D you know?
Or Allegra D because the D is a decongestant
and it helps you feel better because
it clears up your nose and everything.
But it can raise your blood pressure.
It can increase your risk
for cardiac arrhythmias.
It's just not a good practice
on a day to day basis.
So I do take an antihistamine
during allergy season every day,
but I take one of those non
sedating ones like not Benadryl,
but one of those newer generations like
Zyrtec or Claritin or Allegra but make sure.
It doesn't have that Dean it you want to
drink plenty of water because especially
during allergy season you're having a
lot of what's called insensible losses.
Which means that you're losing a lot of
of water because your immune system is,
you know,
fighting this antigen that it's
not supposed to fight,
and then you can of course take you know,
things like lozenges or cough drops or
things like that to soothe your throat.
You don't want to really be taking
too much kind of cough syrup.
Those those throat sprays.
I'm not a big fan of because for
one or two days they might help.
Throat feel better,
but in the long term they can cause
problems and then the last one that
I don't like is the Afrin which
you can squirt up in your nose to
help kind of clear up your nose
when you're going to bed at night.
But using it for more than three days
in a row can actually lead to long term
problems with the anatomy and your nose.
It can lead to necrosis of
the tissue in the nose.
It can cause a lot of damage
so breaks down kind of the
skin within that because
what it does. So when you squirt in that
stuff it's called a vasoconstrictor,
so it causes the blood
vessels to squeeze down,
which means you have less fluid.
Sticking out from the inflammation so
you feel better, but when it causes
those blood vessels to squeeze down,
it limits blood flow to the tissues in
the nose that are thin and sensitive,
and they need a lot of blood,
and so if those blood vessels are
clamping down for more than three days,
those tissues start to decay and
sort of become necrotic.
Wow, interesting, and I didn't
know that about the Claritin D,
that that can lead to cardiac arrest.
Do you mind walk me through
how that works and what
it's basically?
It's a decongestant.
Which is a pseudo amphetamine,
so it's not actually an amphetamine,
but it's a pseudo amphetamine,
but it's the same sort of receptors
and leads to a lot of the same things,
which is to decongest you.
We want to squeeze your blood vessels
down because part of the congestion comes
from leaky blood vessels leaking out.
All of this inflammatory cells into your
tissues, so it raises your heart rate,
which means you're more tachycardic.
That's why sometimes people can feel
a little jittery after they take that,
and it raises your blood pressure because
it's squeezing those blood vessels down,
and by raising your heart rate.
Not in most people, but in some people
who may have the right predisposition,
you're a little dehydrated.
You've had heart disease before or you have
electrolyte abnormalities because you're not.
You're not drinking enough water or
whatever that can lead set you up.
Kind of to have cardiac arrhythmias
like skipped heartbeats,
called PVCS or PVCS.
And sometimes some things that are
even more concerning if you're using
these drugs chronically over time.
Question do a lot of the main
things we do on a day to day basis.
You encourage so for example,
drinking lots of water,
eating a healthy diet.
Can that be especially helpful
in combating allergies?
Very helpful. The water piece of it,
especially the diet. Also, I would say,
especially if you have food allergies because
some people also have food allergies who
want to be real mindful of that as well.
But there's also a whole body of evidence
that certain types of diets that certain
types of year may be more beneficial,
so you kind of want to make sure when
you're very congested or whatever
you're not eating super heavy food
that's very difficult to digest because
your body's resources.
So to speak, our tied up with your
allergies fighting this innocuous antigens.
You don't want to be putting stress on it by
eating a big steak dinner or what have you.
So you wanna try to tailor some of your
foods a little bit tighter feeling and
a little bit too allergy prevention.
And in general,
as the summer months come smaller,
lighter meals more frequently are generally
a better idea than kind of super heavy meals,
because those can, you know,
create more more vasodilation
and more heat in the body,
so more. Ballads, water, and
that'll help out with the allergies
a bit and water based things
like fruit watermelon,
and you know, it's really nice.
That's a lovely part about summer.
We have all these great fruits and
you know, nice long days for us
to enjoy the food all day long.
That's true, I like that,
but no steak dinners, unfortunately.
Well, I think you can,
but I think you just want to be careful
because especially if you're somebody
who has pretty severe allergies,
you're taking a lot of medications.
Those antihistamines can also affect
the way your body digests the food.
So you wanna be careful you wanna
be mindful of you know your current
state if you if you have some mild
allergies and I don't want you to
feel restricted in what you can eat.
But if you're taking medications for
your allergies or they're pretty severe,
those are the days you want to kind of be.
Be gentle on your body, so to speak,
all right. Anything else we
should know about with allergies?
No, I think it's something that
comes back every single year.
But this year in particular because of
COVID-19 we're more mindful if you are
wearing a mask when you're outside,
it will reduce the amount of
pollen that you're exposed to.
And I know we're not all
wearing masks outside,
but if we do end up wearing them,
sometimes it can certainly help to do that.
Change your mask frequently
if you are wearing it outside,
because it will get contaminated with pollen.
If there's a lot of wind or what have you,
and then if you put it right back on,
you're actually introducing those
antigens close to your face.
OK, so kind of recycle
those frequently as post.
Obviously for COVID, well,
I know you need to recycle those
every so often, but not as,
but it's a little different, right?
Totally well, Doctor Paoli thanks so
much for your time here. My pleasure.