Chicago’s warm winter is still having some big impacts, as many people are suffering from seasonal allergies earlier than usual this spring.
“We really didn't have a lot of snow this year. The pollen didn't have a chance to kind of completely die out with the frost. So we're seeing things definitely pop up earlier than you're used to,” said Dr. Sindhura Bandi, an allergist at RUSH University Medical Center.
With three suburban Chicago locations, American Family Care urgent care centers have been busy.
“We're having lots of pollen-producing trees. And so lots of patients are coming in not knowing what's going on,” Dr. Rama Wahood, a family medicine physician with American Family Care.
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Before noon, Wahood had already treated three patients with stuffy noses. Fortunately, she says simply checking what comes out of your nose after blowing into a tissue can help determine if it is allergies, or something else.
“It's a good idea to, you know, look at it and actually examine it. You’d be surprised what snot can tell you,” Wahood said.
Wahood says if your snot is clear or runny, it’s most likely allergies.
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“If it's green or yellow, it could be just a mild infection and if it gets darker or smelly, it could indicate a worsening infection,” Wahood said.
If you’re suffering from seasonal allergies, there are a number of over-the-counter options that doctors recommend.
“Typically it's an antihistamine, so you could do Zyrtec, Claritin. Allegra. There’s non-drowsy ones that you could do. And then we also recommend a nasal spray as well. That helps with your sinuses. It decreases inflammation,” Wahood said.
If an antihistamine isn’t working and you are not interested in allergy shots, there are other options.
“More recently, the FDA has approved different types of what we call sublingual immunotherapy. These are tablets that you put underneath your tongue and they dissolve,” Bandi said.
Sublingual immunotherapy tablets, or SLITS, are available for grass, ragweed and dust allergies, but there is a downside. They can’t be combined if you have more than one allergy.
“It’s really for those patients that we consider to be mono-sensitized, meaning that they only have one allergen,” Bandi said.
Some allergists may offer to mix up the same extracts you would find in allergy shots into a drop form. However, those drops aren’t FDA-approved.
“Because it's not FDA approved, it's not necessarily standardized. Different practices might utilize different ways of creating these drops or creating the therapy. So it's hard to know what each practice is doing,” Bandi said. “It is possible because it has been something that's been out there for the last 10 to 15 years that in the future it may become FDA approved, but at this point, it's not.”
If spring blooms have you suffering, Bandi said there’s no reason to think you need to “tough it out.”
“I think a lot of patients feel that they should be able to tough through allergies or because it's quote unquote, not going to kill them, they may not need to see somebody for it, but it definitely impacts quality of life,” Bandi said. “We are more than happy to see these patients and be able to hopefully provide some solutions for their symptoms.”
