Navigating allergy season can be a humbling experience, even if you’ve been here many times before. You can take your meds as prescribed, but still end up with a stuffy nose, itchy eyes, and a cough, so it’s a fair question to wonder where you’re going wrong.
“If your symptoms don’t improve or get worse in the first few weeks of the spring season, it’s an indication that your medications aren’t effective enough.” Aleena Banerji, MDallergist at Mass General Brigham, clinical director of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School, tells SELF.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to switch medications. Instead, you may want to consider what’s called “dosing flexibility,” where you increase your medication dosage to match the conditions you’re experiencing, David Corry, MDprofessor of immunology, allergy and rheumatology at Baylor College of Medicine, tells SELF.
As you can imagine, there’s a lot to unpack here. And of course, you should only do this with the help of a healthcare provider. Allergists recommend performing this process as follows.
Signs that your current allergy medication regimen isn’t working for you
Some people feel like a million bucks after they start taking allergy medicine, but that’s not the case for everyone.
“Is the best indication that allergy medications are working simply to make you feel better?” Dr. Corry says. (He says that doctors generally consider an 80% or greater reduction in allergy symptoms to be “better.”)
Punam Thakkar, MDassociate professor of otolaryngology/head and neck surgery at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, tells SELF that “if the treatment is successful, you should experience significant relief.” But symptoms that interfere with sleep, work, school, or daily activities are signs that your current treatment plan isn’t enough, Dr. Thakkar says.
Another red flag that your medication isn’t working, says Dr. Banerji: Symptoms return a few hours after taking the medication. “If this happens, it may mean that the type, dosage, or timing of the medication is not appropriate for your specific allergy, and you may want to reevaluate your treatment plan with your allergist,” she says.
Doctors may recommend increasing the dose in certain circumstances.
There are many reasons why your current allergy treatment regimen is not working for you, including that you need a different treatment or that additional medication may be helpful. But it’s also possible that your dosage isn’t right, says Dr. Corry. If you like your current medication or have already topped up your supplies and don’t want to throw away what you’ve got, he says you should talk to your doctor about increasing your dose.
