so what are the best allergy eye drops that are available both over-the-counter
and help relieve your red and itchy eyes? Well today we're covering my two
favorites so let's take a look. hey everybody what's up this is dr. Joe
Allen here from doctor eye health the channel helps with the eyes vision and
finding the best vision product so hey if you're new here to the channel make
sure that you subscribe so you don't miss any of my future videos also at any
point you can check out the links in the description below I'll hook up
additional information about the different products that we mentioned and
anything else that I forget otherwise let's talk about eye allergies so the
actual medical term for eye allergies is called allergic conjunctivitis and
that's the allergy symptoms where your eyes are turning red irritated kind of
scratchy itchy feeling right along the eyelids the eyelids will actually become
puffy and swell and then they'll even experience tearing and you can have
these eye allergy symptoms from seasonal allergies, times like in the
spring and fall when all the flowers or the trees are pollinating or you can
have it from perennial allergies. And that's more from being inside around
like dust mites, sometimes cockroaches and even pet dander or some of the most
common perennial allergies, but I know for a lot of people when you're looking
for over-the-counter options for allergy symptoms then you want to find something
that's working but there's just way too many options on the shelf so here's a
couple of my favorites that are over-the-counter and work excellent for
eye allergy symptoms. now when it comes to allergic conjunctivitis treatment
there are two over-the-counter options that I find work the best one is called
Zaditor and another one's called Alaway and they have the same active ingredient
which is called ketotifen fumarate now ketotifen fumarate works by controlling
both your antihistamine- as an antihistamine. Controlling your histamine
response as well as a mast cell stabilizer so you can kind of get this
dual action going on the antihistamine addresses the allergy symptoms you have
right now this moment and then the mast cell stabilizer helps soothe things for
future outbreaks. now Zaditor is pretty easy to find because it is in the orange
label so whenever you go into the store we need to say hey find the one that is
in the orange label and that's the one we want you to use now when I was living
in South Texas getting my doctorate people had
something called cedar fever. basically the seed of trees would open up the
pollen would get into their eyes and it gave a lot of people allergy symptoms so
we basically got into the habit of handing people a coupon for Zaditor
hey pick this up it works great the other one again is called Alaway. now
again they both have same ingredients they work the same way use one drop into
both eyes twice a day whenever you're having allergy symptoms but again all
the way ends at at or even though they're the same ingredient there's a
little difference Alaway is actually in a little bit bigger bottle so Zaditor
has a five milliliter bottle it usually comes in around $12 u.s. for a
single bottle of it but if you look at alaway you get a 10 milliliter bottle
and it's only about $10 u.s. depending on where you're shopping you can of
course check out some of the references online if you want to see updated prices
but of course you go to the pharmacy you can compare the orange bottle Zaditor
to the blue and white bottle of alaway and you'll see the price difference
now one of the big reasons why I like these medications more than some of the
other brands is that it doesn't have any other weird ingredients that help with
redness of the eye a lot of time you think oh my eyes are red I need some
sort of a drop that's going to get the redness to go away but those medications
that cause these blood vessels to constrict and get the redness to go away
can actually have a rebound effect and make things worse over time so I do have
another video that covers different eye drops for red eyes and if you want to
check that out I'll hook that up here and you do card above as well as in the
description below but again when you're looking at these different allergy eye
drops make sure that you read the label on the back of the box and the
instructions on the insert to make sure that you don't have any other allergic
complications that you're not allergic to the drops themselves or any other
inactive ingredients it's important to read these labels because if you're a
woman and you're pregnant or nursing you may see that head says hey talk to your
doctor before using this and that's because these drops are actually
category pregnancy C there's only one drop on the market for allergies that is
okay for pregnancy is actually a pregnancy category B so a bit safer and
that one is actually prescription so that one's called lastacalf and you
will have to talk to your eye doc or your physician to get them
prescription for that drop otherwise if you are still having allergy symptoms
your irritation the redness the puffiness of your eyelids is not going
away make sure you talk to your local eye physician your eye doctor in your
community so that they can actually make sure that hey it's the right diagnosis
it's actually allergies and to make sure that it's not something that needs to be
treated with a stronger medication now I personally don't get allergies too often
it's usually when I'm in a kind of a dusty moldy environment like a dark
basement or something but being a contact lens where you can still use
these drops you just want to use the drops and wait at least 10 to 15 minutes
and then put your contact lenses in then it should be fine to use but again if
you're using that drop a second time throughout the day you have to take your
contacts out and then wait again another 10-15 minutes but often times if you're
having that terrible red itchy sensation you should probably take a break from
your contacts anyway and just go ahead and switch back to glasses and even
sometimes just using a lubricating I drop one that doesn't have any
antihistamine or really mast cell stabilizer effect should be fine those
also will rinse out and he sort of pollen or debris that could have landed
on the eye surface itself and a helper rinse it out another cool tip is that
aside from using eye drops and manage your allergy symptoms try just using a
cold wash rag and holding that on the eyelids that coolness effect is gonna
help reduce some of the eyelid swelling and make it feel a lot more comfortable
now another cool thing about these drops is that they are approved for children's
use when they're ages 3 and up but if you do have a kid who's having
allergy symptoms I do think it's best to see a doctor just to make sure it
actually is allergies versus something else get crazy type of pinkeye or
something but a lot of times we'll be able to prescribe either children's
alloway a little bit weaker form or they can always get a different type of
prescription that's available again through your physician so my health
question of the day what kind of allergy symptoms are you having go ahead and
comment the section below let us know what things you're allergic to what kind
of allergy symptoms you have and what eyedrops
help with managing your allergy symptoms alright everyone thanks so much for
watching if you like the video give me a big thumbs up subscribe if you're new or
if you'd like to see another cool video in my entire series about the best
eye drops to use just go ahead and click or tap
the screen up here to the side or if you'd like to see another cool video from dr
eye health just click or tap the screen down over here
again this is dr. Joe Allen hear from doctor eye health the channel to helps you with the
eyes, vision and finding the best vision products keep an eye on it we'll talk to
you soon