With springtime finally here, allergies are a common ailment that generally become top of mind. But allergies can cause much more than simply sneezing and coughing depending on the type of irritant and how your body reacts.

While some types of allergies are fairly common knowledge, such as environmental or food allergies, there are actually several different types of allergies that can affect your body:

• Respiratory Allergy: Includes outdoor and indoor allergens, such as various molds, pet dander, trees, grasses, cockroaches, mites, and more.
• Environment Allergy: Indoor only allergens, such as molds, mites, and pet dander.
• Childhood Allergy: Includes indoor and food allergies from the age of 3 months to 2 years. The allergens include mold, pet dander, fish, eggs, nuts, and more.
• Food Allergy: Caused by individual or components of seafood items, eggs, milk, nuts, and wheat.
• Gastrointestinal: Causes adverse food reactions, Celiac Disease, and more. Typically triggered by components of certain foods, like gluten, or from items like seafood, nuts, milk, and wheat.
• Unexplained Fatigue: Caused by underlying autoimmune diseases, such as Celiac Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Connective Tissue, Autoimmune Thyroid, etc.

Most symptoms such as runny nose, sneezing and itchy eyes can be easy to treat with over-the-counter medications, but some allergies can become much more severe, causing eczema, conjunctivitis, vomiting and diarrhea, or anaphylaxis. Certain allergies can also become much worse when other respiratory issues are present, such as asthma. Knowing the type of allergy that is affecting you as well as possible allergen triggers is important in order to receive proper treatment.

In order to find the root cause of your allergy symptoms, your doctor may want to perform allergy testing. Luckily, the test is a simple blood test that can help provide answers, even if it is to rule out a suspected allergy. All that is needed a small blood sample, which is then sent out for lab testing. The test looks at the amount of allergy antibodies present in your blood which help indicate your sensitivity to allergens. This test requires no exposure to any allergens, so there is no worry of any reactions occurring.

Allergies can be much more than a seasonal annoyance. If you have been experiencing unexplained symptoms that may be attributed to an allergy or underlying condition, visit us today. We will talk with you about your symptoms and perform appropriate testing if required to help find the answers and bring you the relief you need.