"Flowers trigger seasonal allergies."
That's actually not true.
"If you have a hypoallergenic pet,
you won't have an allergic reaction."
Unfortunately, there is no such thing
as a hypoallergenic pet.
"You can outgrow your seasonal allergies."
So, there's no definite way
that you can outgrow your seasonal allergies.
My name is Dr. Wei Wei Li.
I am a board-certified adult and pediatric
allergy immunology specialist.
My name is Dr. Payel Gupta,
and I am also an adult and pediatric
triple-board-certified allergy,
asthma, and immunology doctor.
And today we'll be debunking myths about allergies.
"If you didn't have allergies as a kid,
you won't get them as an adult."
So, that's a myth.
You can actually develop allergies
at any point in your life.
Especially now, with people moving to different locations.
The change in climate, location,
or sometimes adopting a new pet
can increase your risk for developing allergies.
Right. So it's any new exposure, essentially,
can cause your system to start reacting
and develop an allergy.
I've also had it the reverse.
I've also had people who have lived
with cats and dogs while they were children,
and then they decide to get a cat or a dog as an adult,
and they're now allergic.
And so your immune system is constantly changing,
and so you can develop an allergy at any time.
"You should only take allergy medication
once you feel symptoms."
So, that is a myth.
So, if you wait until your symptoms
get super intense and super severe,
then it'll be that much harder
to get those symptoms under control.
So it's a good idea to start early.
Like, if you have pollen allergy in the spring,
I usually say have the patient start premedicating
with antihistamine, nasal spray, or eyedrops
before the season starts.
I usually recommend as soon as they start seeing
even a little bit of the pollen that they're allergic to.
Especially severe seasonal-allergy sufferers,
we have them take them even two weeks in advance,
just so they get used to taking them.
The timing sometime can change from year to year,
depending on the weather.
So you can use the timing from last year
to make approximate guess
to when you can start premedication.
Gupta: Tree allergies are mostly a springtime allergen,
grass allergies are for summer,
and weed allergies are in the fall.
So for people who have tree, grass, and weed,
normally it would've been maybe from, like,
April until September that they might have had symptoms.
But now we're seeing even as early as February, actually.
So February, and then the weed allergen
kind of ending as late as October, November.
And patients ask us, "Is it safe
to take the medication every day?"
I would say if you take the medication
according to how we recommend it,
it is safe and effective.
And it's important to know that
when you take your medication, such as a combination
of oral antihistamine and nasal spray,
together every day, it achieve a better efficacy
than taking it sporadically only when you have symptoms.
"Flowers trigger seasonal allergies."
That's actually not true.
Pollens from flowering plants
are not the main contributor to seasonal-allergy symptoms.
In order for pollen to cause allergic symptoms,
they need to meet three criteria.
They need to be small,
they need to be light,
and they need to be dry to be carried by wind.
Gupta: So the pollen in flowers is actually large,
and it's distributed by insects.
And so that pollen is not in the air,
which means that it doesn't get into our eyes and nose.
However, for tree pollen, weed pollen, and grass pollen,
because it's light
and because it travels in the air more easily,
then it can get into our eyes
and nose and airways more easily.
And because it travels at least around 50 miles,
that means it might not be a tree in your backyard,
it might be a tree somewhere far away
that you're reacting to.
But I do hear that.
Every year a patient come in saying that,
"This is the worst allergy symptom
that I have compared to the past."
So I think that has to do with a number of factors,
such as climate change,
and also planting particular type of tree
in certain location can increase the symptoms.
"Eating local honey can help cure seasonal allergies."
That is a myth because local honey
contains pollen collected by bees.
So those come from flowering plants.
We mentioned before, pollen from flowering plants
are not major contributor to seasonal allergies.
And also we don't have a lot of studies done
on the effectiveness of local honey.
So we cannot know for sure how effective they are
in treating or helping to cure
your seasonal-allergy symptoms.
But I love honey because I use that
to help with allergy symptoms
such as itchy, scratchy throat.
So I have no problem recommending using honey
as a way to soothe your throat, your symptoms.
But I would not say it can cure seasonal allergies.
She nailed it.
Hopefully I can do that every time.
"If you have a hypoallergenic pet,
you won't have an allergic reaction."
So, that's a myth.
So, unfortunately, there is no such thing
as a hypoallergenic pet.
A lot of breeders will claim to have hypoallergenic pets,
but unfortunately there is no
100% animal without any dander.
Li: The pet dander is
the microscopic flecks of skin that the pet shed.
So the same protein can be also found in their saliva.
So it's not the fur,
but rather the shedding of the skin, with their saliva.
It's important to know that even hairless dog can shed,
and that will contain some degree of allergens.
And so there might be certain breeds
that people are less allergic to,
and that's all person-dependent.
So, for example, I have a cat allergy,
but there's certain cats that I do totally fine around,
and then there's other cats that
as soon as I walk into someone's home
and they have that cat, I'll start reacting.
And so it is not just by touching
or rubbing your face against the cat.
The dander is airborne,
so that can get into your eyes and nose
and into your airways
and start causing that IgE antibody to react
and produce that histamine, which causes the symptoms.
Frequent vacuuming is super important.
Also air purifiers.
And so for somebody that really wants a pet,
or, you know, usually it happens the other way around,
is that they've already gotten a pet
and they're not willing to get rid of it.
For those patients, then we usually do attempt
to do allergy immunotherapy
and see how well we can control their allergy symptoms.
We don't have a test to test
for particular breeds. Li: We wish we had.
Yeah, we wish we did, because if we did
we would have a huge, long line out the door
of people wanting to get tested for particular breeds
that they might be able to have in their home.
"Allergy shots don't work."
So, allergy shots are immunotherapy,
and allergy shots actually have a lot of data behind them,
and they've been used for years and years.
And we know that they do reduce the,
not only the symptoms that people experience,
but also the medications that people are on.
And then there's also the
allergy sublingual immunotherapy tablets
that are FDA approved.
So there's two different options,
and I just always like to mention that,
because some people are scared of shots.
I think there is this myth,
because people will misunderstand
allergy shots as medication.
Allergy shots are not medications.
They don't provide immediate symptomatic relief.
But see them as a way
to naturally desensitize your allergens
and to naturally develop tolerance.
You will still have to take your allergy medication,
such as antihistamine or nasal spray,
at the beginning of allergy shots
to help you manage your allergy symptoms.
But over the long term, allergy shots do work
to achieve that natural tolerance.
"You can outgrow your seasonal allergies."
That is not true,
because with your immune system changing,
sometimes your symptom can get better or worse over time.
So there's no definite way
that you can outgrow your seasonal allergies.
Sometimes people might have moved
from the West Coast to the East Coast,
and all of a sudden they don't have
those seasonal symptoms that they used to.
So they might say that,
"Oh, I outgrew my seasonal allergies,"
but it's really that they moved
and that they're not exposed to the same pollens
that they were when they were younger.
The most frequent symptoms that we see
are symptoms of the eyes.
For example, itchy, watery eyes.
The nose can get congested.
You can have a runny nose, itchy nose.
You can have a sore throat from postnasal drip.
And you can also have coughing, wheezing,
shortness of breath if you have allergic asthma.
Currently the closest cure we have for seasonal allergies
is called allergy immunotherapy.
I think the important thing to remember with immunotherapy
is that you have to be ready and committed for it.
For allergy shots, you will need to go
into the allergist's office weekly
for six to nine months,
and then it goes to monthly.
And we would say that you should continue your therapy
for at least three to five years for it to be effective.
And then for the sublingual immunotherapy tablets,
it depends on which tablet you're going to start.
For dust mite immunotherapy tablets, for example,
you have to take it daily.
And we would also recommend that you take them daily
for at least three to five years
in order to get the full benefit from them.
"You can cure your allergies."
So, we can't cure environmental
or food allergies at this time.
We've come pretty close to environmental allergies,
but the reason is, is that we haven't figured out
how to definitively change the immune system's reaction
to environmental allergens or to food allergens.
Our environment doesn't stay the same all the time.
So with new exposure in our environment,
our immune system is constantly adapting
to the new triggers in the environment.
So we can develop new allergies
even if we "cure" the old allergies.
That's why I don't like to use the word "cure,"
because you can always develop new allergy symptoms
after going through immunotherapy.
Gupta: So, once we have the allergy test results,
we always want to see, what are your exposures?
And knowledge is power.
So once you know what your triggers are,
there's a lot of things you can do
besides taking medications.
There are behavioral modifications.
We always provide to our patient education.
What to do when you are allergic to a certain pollen,
what to do during pollen season,
or what to do with pet dander, dust mite.
We can help you to manage your allergies.