How to choose allergy medicine?

 Category: Allergy

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At least each of us is familiar with various implications of allergic reactions, which can vary from eczema, hives, fever, food allergy, asthma and etc. Unfortunately sometimes they can be even life-threatening (it is called anaphylaxis).  

In our days there is a huge variety of allergy medicines available.

The problem is to verify which one will help you to prevent all allergy symptoms, to choose, which medicine is the best.

First let’s try to look through the main groups of medicine used to treat allergy, to prevent allergy symptoms. They are called antihistamine. Antihistamine is a drug which blocks a receptor for histamine. And histamine is a chemical in our body which over-reacts to certain allergens and produces allergy symptoms (for example, sneezing). 

So, all allergy medications can be divided into the following groups:

• First-generation antihistamines (Benadril, Chlortrimeton) - the original drugs which have been developed to prevent allergy symptoms and are available without any prescription. The week point of these medications is that despite they are effective, they have several side effects. The main one is that they may cause drowsiness. And that’s why it’s difficult to use them every time
• Second-generation antihistamines (Claritin, Zyrtec, Allegra, Periactin) – are effective medicines, they have less side effects then the previous group, but sometimes some of them can cause mild sedation. But the strong point is that they are more long-lasting then the previous so you can take them only once a day and it will be enough.
• Third- generation antihistamines (Telfast, Tsetirizin) –are highly effective medicines, they do not have bothersome side-effects , the effect from them is much more quick , they do not cooperate with other drugs and they can be used for complex treatment of various concomitant diseases without any consequences.

So, the question is – which of these treatments are helpful exactly for you?

Since non-sedating antihistamines have been developed, the demand on first-generation drugs has fallen as there’s no need use drugs which cause side-effects. But still people sometimes use them as they are not expensive and they don’t need a prescription to buy them. Anyway, the second-generation antihistamine is the choice that is widespread for treating allergy in our days. And it’s really impossible to say which medicine is the best because it depends on a person, on his age, on his race and many other circumstances. 

And my advice is that if you have allergy your doctor should prescribe a specific drug for you according to your needs  as  each person is different. It’s really very difficult to find “your own medicine” and  sometimes it takes some time (even months) to choose the best one, which helps to prevent all symptoms– you try one medicine first, it doesn’t control your allergy symptoms, then your allergist prescribes you another medicine and you try it for a while until you find the best variant.

Surely, the best thing you can do is to prevent allergy symptoms so you can avoid allergy reactions. But it’s easy to say then to do it in a real life.