More than 50 million Americans suffer from allergies, including food allergies and allergies to dust, pollen, and other triggers. While occasional mild allergies like hay fever can be annoying and uncomfortable, many people suffer from allergies regularly, dealing with a stuffy nose, itchy eyes, hives, nausea, and breathing issues.
Primary Care Associates is a leading provider of immunotherapy, an advanced allergy treatment that helps your body slowly adapt to allergens, so symptoms are reduced or eliminated. Here’s how our team is helping patients at our Frederick and Clarksburg, Maryland, offices improve their allergy symptoms and health.
Your body’s immune system is a remarkably complex system designed to fight off invading germs and pathogens. Sometimes, though, your immune system overreacts to a substance that’s not necessarily harmful. That’s what happens in an allergic reaction.
Allergies happen when your body’s immune system has an abnormal response to a substance like pollen, chemical fumes, foods, medicines, or pet dander. The first step in treating allergies is determining what’s causing that abnormal response. We do that with allergy testing.
Skin testing is one of the most effective ways to check for an allergic reaction to common substances. Our team marks out a grid on your back during a skin test, then administers a very tiny amount of an allergen to one square in the grid.
After a brief period, we check the square for a reaction, noting which squares (and substances) exhibit allergic responses. Once the cause of your allergic reaction is determined, we can develop a custom treatment plan that may include immunotherapy.
Sometimes called “allergy shots,” immunotherapy administers tiny “doses” of a known allergen to help you build up a tolerance or resistance to the substance. While immunotherapy was once only available as injectable “doses,” today, the therapy can also be administered for some allergies using drops placed under your tongue (sometimes called oral immunotherapy).
Our team offers both injections and oral drops, depending on your allergy type and other factors. Regardless of the type of treatment you receive, you’ll need to have frequent doses over several months, followed by maintenance doses to help you maintain tolerance and manage your allergy over the long term.
Immunotherapy isn’t always the best choice for very mild, infrequent symptoms, nor is it the best option for all types of allergies. For instance, because of the potential for severe reactions, allergy shots may not be used in treating many types of food allergies. Oral immunotherapy is a better option for some patients with food allergies.
No matter what type of allergy you suffer from, our team can help you manage your symptoms with immunotherapy, lifestyle changes, or other treatment options. Book an appointment online or over the phone today with the team at Primary Care Associates and let them develop a plan for you.
