If you suffer from seasonal allergies, you may dread spring and fall because the symptoms disrupt your life, making it hard to breathe, sleep, and be outside.
While effective for many, allergy medications may not provide long-term relief from your symptoms and may cause unwanted side effects like drowsiness. Allergy injections, also called immunotherapy, are a long-term treatment for seasonal allergies that can provide the relief you want without the side effects.
At Respacare in Bridgewater, New Jersey, our pulmonary and allergy specialists, Dr. Nehal Mehta and Dr. Prashant Patel, offer many treatments to help allergy sufferers feel better.
Immunotherapy is a process, and we want to help you understand the buildup and maintenance phase of our allergy injection program.
Allergy injections are a preventive treatment for allergies. We offer these injections for our patients suffering from pollen, dust, mold, and bee sting allergies. Like vaccines, it helps improve how your immune system responds to the allergen.
Your immune system views allergens as harmful to your health, releasing chemicals when you come in contact as a means of protection, but instead triggering the allergic reaction. The goal of allergy injections is desensitization of the immune system to the allergen, reducing or eliminating the symptoms.
We may not eliminate symptoms, but allergy injections may lessen the severity and provide long-term protection against more serious health issues like allergy-induced asthma.
It takes some time to desensitize the immune system to your allergen and injections are given in phases. During the buildup phase, we start with a small dose that we gradually increase over several weeks.
We customize treatment plans, but you may need one to three injections a week for 3-6 months. You stay at the office for at least 30 minutes after the injection so we can monitor you for reactions and provide appropriate treatments.
You should avoid strenuous exercise for at least two hours after your injection. Exercise increases blood flow and may spread the allergen around the body too quickly, increasing the risk of an adverse reaction.
We move to the maintenance phase when we find the highest dose you can tolerate. You then return to the office once a month to receive your maintenance dose injection for 3-5 years.
Improving your tolerance to your allergen takes time and you may not notice changes in symptoms until about 12 months after starting treatment.
Allergy injections are a long-term commitment, but well worth it.
Up to 80% of people who get allergy shots experience significant improvements in symptoms and quality of life. Allergy injections aren’t a cure for allergies, but they can make life more enjoyable during allergy season.
You may feel apprehensive about allergy shots if you have a fear of needles. We understand. That’s why we offer sublingual immunotherapy.
Similar to allergy injections, sublingual immunotherapy is a liquid or pill that contains your allergen and is placed under the tongue and absorbed in the mouth. We start at a low dose and increase until we reach the effective maintenance dose.
While sublingual immunotherapy is effective, we can only treat one allergy at a time. Allergy injections can treat multiple allergens.
If you’re looking for a long-term solution for your allergies, call us today or request an appointment online. We can talk to you about your treatment options and help you get the relief you need.
