Immunotherapy For Allergies: What You Should Know About Allergy Shots

When you discover that you are suffering from allergies and your doctor recommends immunotherapy as a form of treatment, you may find yourself feeling unsure of how the process will go and how these allergy injections will help you with your severe allergy symptoms and discomfort. Before you allow your uncertainty to make you overly worried or cause you to skip treatments, get to know some of the important facts about the immunotherapy process and how it will affect you. Then, you can get started on your latest allergy treatment knowing what to expect.

How Your Body Reacts to Allergens

The important thing for you to understand about immunotherapy and the benefits that it can have for you is that immunotherapy is designed to improve your body's response to allergens. When your body comes into contact with an allergen before immunotherapy, it has an extreme reaction trying to expel that substance from the body.

This protective reaction causes your body's immune system to release histamines and other chemicals designed to fight off the invading allergens. Essentially, it means your body sees the allergen (like pollen, animal dander, and the like) as a dangerous threat even though generally speaking, the allergen should not be dangerous to the human body.

Immunotherapy Builds Tolerance Over Time

Immunotherapy helps to slowly build immune system tolerance to the allergen. Allergy shots begin with very small amounts of the problematic allergens to trigger a response by your immune system. This will not cause you to experience allergy symptoms but will get your immune system involved.

Over time, the amount of the allergens increases slightly so that more "normal" amounts of the allergen that you may encounter in your daily life will become less troublesome and cause fewer symptoms in the future. By the time you are done with immunotherapy, you may not get any symptoms with low levels of exposure to allergens, and only minor symptoms when allergen contact and exposure is high.

Immunotherapy Does Work if You Stick With it

When you first begin your allergy shots, the amounts of allergens in your injections will be extremely small, and you will likely not notice a major difference if you are suffering from severe allergy symptoms. This may cause some people to feel discouraged.

However, it is important to know that because allergy shots work over time, you cannot expect immediate results. If your doctor increases your dosage too quickly, you can have severe reactions to the shots that can include swelling and discomfort or a red, hot rash around the injection site, and, sometimes, even a swelling of the throat (anaphylaxis). So, trust that your immunotherapy treatments are working, whether you can feel it right away or not.

Now that you better understand getting immunotherapy for your allergies, you can get your treatments started and get to feeling better overall as soon as safely possible. If you're looking to get the treatment done, consider contacting a local specialists, such as Allergy & Asthma Clinic of Wyoming LLC, to discuss any of your concerns.

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