Springtime Allergy Remedies

Does your child suffer from spring time allergy symptoms like nasal congestion, runny nose, or watery eyes? We are often asked when the best time to start your child’ allergy medications.

The best time for you to start your daily antihistamine like Claritin, Zyrtec, and Allegra is before the pollen counts are high to help prevent some of these symptoms. Often antihistamines take up to one to two weeks to build up in your body to reduce the histamine levels and provide relief. Starting these medications earlier might help reduce the severity of your child’s allergy symptoms when the pollen counts are at their highest.
The best time of day to take your antihistamine and nasal sprays is in the evening because usually pollen counts are at the highest in the early morning hours.

If nasal congestion, runny nose or a post nasal drip cough are your child’s symptom a nasal steroid or nasal antihistamine might give your child some relief. Nasacort and Flonase are now over the counter but please call us if you have questions about dosing. The nasal antihistamines are prescriptions. Often using these nose spray at night will also help reduce your child’s allergy symptoms.

If watery itchy eyes are your child’s main symptom there are over the counter allergy eye drops like Zaditor 1 drop twice a day, Opcon A 1 drop 4 times a day, Visine allergy 1 drop twice a day, and Alaway 1 drop twice a day.

The Weather Channel app and other weather app have pollen counts for the day that you view from your smart phone. For your convenience, we also have a link to the daily pollen count on our website in the upper right hand corner. Another great website for allergy information is the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America http://www.aafa.org/

If your child’s allergy symptoms are not improving or if your child is running a fever please make an appointment to see one of us.