A few changes around the house may help stop winter allergy symptoms.

Most people don’t associate winter allergies, but winter allergies persist into and through the cold months, when they pose slightly different problems than they do during other seasons.

“You don’t have any pollens in winter,” says Douglas H. Jones, MD, of the Rocky Mountain Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology Group in Layton, Utah. “But you still have the indoor [allergens] — cats, dogs, cockroach droppings, dust mites, and mold.”

Matthew A. Rank, MD, an allergy expert with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, says that although specific data are hard to pin down, roughly 5 to 20 percent of Americans suffer from some form of winter allergy.

Winter Allergies and Indoor Heat

A big problem with winter allergies is that cold-weather lifestyles can turn a simple allergic reaction into something worse, says Jones.

“People are turning up the heaters, which makes the indoor air even drier,” he says, “and that leads to dry noses, which increases the incidence of nosebleeds and skin cracking, which in turn boosts infection risk” when someone’s nasal passages are already inflamed from allergies. He recommends using nasal saline rinses to lower the risk of contracting a secondary viral infection.

Jones, Rank, and other allergy experts offer these tips for minimizing indoor allergen exposure in winter:

• Use a humidifier to reduce dryness in the air, but don’t turn your home into a rain forest: Dust mites thrive in humidity over 60 percent and temperatures of 60 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Mold also grows faster in high humidity. Dr. Rank recommends a maximum humidity of 50 percent.
• Avoid wall-to-wall carpeting, which provides a favorable environment for dust mites. Use area rugs instead.
• Clean, dust, and vacuum regularly, using a vacuum with a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter.
• Wash sheets weekly in hot water — at least 130 degrees Fahrenheit — to kill dust mites, and use hypoallergenic cases for mattresses and pillows to keep dust mites trapped.
• To minimize dander, bathe pets once a week (but not more often — more frequent bathing can dry out a pet’s coat and skin), and keep animals out of the bedroom of anyone in the house who has allergies.

If you’ve done all you can to allergy-proof your home but you still have symptoms, it might not be your fault, says Jones. Public areas such as workplaces can have the same allergy-inducing conditions as your home: dry air, dust, and dust mites. In addition pet owners often get dander on their clothes and unwittingly transport it into public places. The level of cat dander in public places, according to Jones, “is high enough to…trigger allergy.”

Treatments for Winter Allergy Symptoms

To treat allergy symptoms, Jones cautions against older over-the-counter medications, which, he says, can do more harm than good.

“Some of these drugs have too many side effects,” he notes, “and people don’t really understand how to match their symptoms to the product. They just know they feel bad and want to feel better.”

For example, some OTC allergy medications contain decongestants, like pseudoephedrine, which can raise a user’s heart rate. The active ingredient in the antihistamine Benadryl — diphenhydramine — causes some tissues to dry out and promotes urinary retention, Jones says. “So people with prostate problems, who may have trouble urinating, find that that condition worsens when they take diphenhydramine.”

Jones says that better options are decongestants that contain loratadine (Claritin) and cetirizine (Zyrtec), two drugs that moved from prescription to OTC status in recent years. Prescription steroid nasal sprays tend to be more effective than antihistamine tablets, adds Rank, though individual responses vary and the two types of drugs are often used in combination.

Click Here to see what Chem-Dry of Stratford can do for you!