What's Your Allergy Trigger?

As 21 million people – over half women – prepare to mainline antihistamines ahead of hay fever season, ANDREA CHILDS decodes ‘super-allergens’ and reveals the new go-to remedies.

- Andrea Childs

It starts with a sneeze but descends into a head-thumping, face-aching, throat-itching hell. And that’s just hay fever, which hits a high in May. For many of us, allergies are a 24/7, 365-day-a-year game of dare, as we trade off having a life – going to the gym, eating food, walking the dog – with triggering our symptoms.

Almost 21 million adults in the UK (51 percent of which are women) suffer from an allergy of some description; 10 million have multiple allergies. The effects range in severity but include skin rashes, respiratory problems, vomiting and diarrhoea, and life-threatening anaphylactic shock.

‘Allergies can be inherited, but you may have a different trigger to your parent. You can also develop them suddenly as adults, despite having never had them before,’ says airborne allergen expert Max Wiseberg. ‘They’re caused when you react to a substance that’s usually harmless. Your immune system responds by flooding your body with histamines to remove the threat, causing classic allergy symptoms.’

Antihistamines are the standard solution − experts recommend daily, non-drowsy versions – but there’s now a new raft of bespoke alternatives for each individual allergy, too…

GRASS AND TREE POLLENS

For some, daffodils are the first signs of spring. For others, it’s uncontrolled sneezing and weeping eyes. ‘Ninety five percent of all people with hay fever react to grass pollen, and 25 percent of us react to tree pollen, both of which are released between March and July,’ says Wiseberg.