3 Ways to Prioritize Your Allergy Health This New Year

It’s a new year, and a time to think about what you really want for the twelve months ahead. Getting healthier is usually top of mind, so why not consider how you can prioritize your health — specifically, reducing or eliminating your allergy symptoms — this year? By getting to the cause of your allergies, you can make changes that will last for years to come.

Identify Your Triggers

The only way to tackle your allergy symptoms is to understand where they come from. Finding what you’re allergic to typically starts by tracking your symptoms.

• If you have environmental allergies, track when you start feeling symptoms, and track where you are, what products you use, and what you’re exposed to even before you feel symptoms.
• If you have food allergies, keep a food diary and track symptoms throughout a week or two. You and your clinician may pick up on patterns that help determine what makes you sick.

After tracking symptoms, it’s time to “make it official.” The most accurate way to determine what you’re allergic to is to get allergy testing — an allergy clinician can do a blood or skin test to determine which food or environmental allergens you are allergic to, and at what level. An exam, history, and your symptom tracking will help guide your clinician where to start with your allergy testing.

Make Meaningful Changes

Results from your allergy test — or even your symptom tracking — can help you determine what may need to be adjusted in your life to feel your best.

• Avoidance — simply avoiding the things that make you sick by eliminating them from your diet or environment
• Modifications — may include swapping out products that cause reactions, cleaning your home, and preparing for seasonal changes
• Symptoms relievers — taking antihistamines, using creams or inhalers, or other symptom relievers to temporarily control symptoms

These measures only go so far, so many people opt to treat the cause of their allergy with immunotherapy.

Treating the Cause can be Simple and Affordable

If avoidance, modifications, and symptom relievers just don’t cut it, it may be worth looking into a disease-modifying treatment. Instead of waiting for symptoms and then temporarily masking them, immunotherapy can train the body to stop reacting to the allergens that make you sick in the first place. Unlike allergy shot immunotherapy, allergy drop immunotherapy following The La Crosse Method^™ Protocol is personalized to each patient to treat all the identified allergens safely at home.

Best of all, treatment is safe and effective for both food and environmental allergies for people of all ages. Find a clinician near you that reports being trained to offer sublingual immunotherapy to make your New Year’s health resolution a reality.