I don’t know exactly what I am allergic too, but I get a runny noze, I sneeze, and I have itchy eyes during certain times of year. It flares up when I am out in the country sometimes.
For years I have taken Sudafed Plus…and that has licked it. (Pseudoephedrine HCL 30MG). Usually I would just take one in the morning or whenever I felt symptoms and I wouldn’t need another at all that day.
Once in a while the Sudafed would seem to not work, and then I would use something like Allerest or Chlortrimatron and that would work. But I always went back to Sudafed.
But for some unknown reason, my allergies have become very persistant and difficult to treat. With the onset of spring here in the Pacific Northwest my sneezing, runny nose, and itchy eyes are refusing to go away no matter what I take.
Maybe I have acquired a resistance to my normal drugs?? Or maybe the pollin count has skyrocketed for some reason this spring??
I don’t know. Does anyone have any ideas? Any great non-prescription allergy drug recommendations? Or prescription??
I can tell you this much: I suffered for years with seasonal allergies and nothing I took ever worked 100% until I went to see a doctor. He gave me samples of three different prescription medicines and a prescription for each. He told me to take the samples for a few days each and then fill the prescription for the one that worked best.
I wound up on Tavist D, back when it was a prescription medication, and it worked great for me for almost 10 years, until they changed the formulation of it. Now I’m on Allegra and things seem to be going great again.
Another vote for Allegra: no side effects, no dry mouth, no drowsiness, and hardly any sneezin’ snifflin’ stuff. Works great. There is talk of making it over-the-counter but I hope they don’t since I get a month’s supply for $3.00 co-pay and if it’s OTC who knows what it will cost.
As a long-time allergy sufferer I have a lot of experience with various allergy drugs. Pseudoephedrine is decent but not extremely effective. It also mixes up into bathtub crank if you’re into that sort of thing.
The prescription drugs are definitely the way to go. Seldane used to be the good stuff, but it’s been pulled due to damaging livers or some fool thing. Allegra is a good one too.
Your doc probably has some samples for you to try. If you don’t have insurance you can get them over the counter in mexico and canada (I think… you could get seldane OTC in canada anyway).
(Insert standard medical disclaimers here, I’m just a fellow allergy sufferer.)
I do echo the post of KneadToKnow and reccomend seeing your doctor or allergist: if they’ve been visited recenctly by a pharmacutical rep, they’ll have lots of goodies… er… samples to hand out. Just be careful when you try them out, give them time to work and then clear out of your system.
One alternative: get two different allergy meds. (As in, two different drugs, not as in one brand name and one generic version.) First dose take one, second dose take the other, and keep switching back and forth so that as the first medicine wears off the second one will be kicking in. I find this more effective than taking the same thing all day. Just make sure you double check that there aren’t any problems with taking the two together, and include the side effects in this consideration. If both can give you dry mouth, then good ol’ Muprhy will ensure that your mouth will make the Sahara look like the Everglades.
Another alternative: try DayQuil. It is overkill (unless you are starting to get a sinus headache and having problems with coughing up the crud that’s dripping down) but for some reason the Sudafed in liquid form works a bit better, at least on me.
Beetle, there could be a couple of things going on. Most likely, either your allergies got worse or you developed a new one.
You have a couple choices.
You can try every OTC med on the store shelf to see if one works better. Also keep in mind that pseudoephedrine can cause high blood pressure or make it worse, so as you age you need to keep that in mind. Benadryl/diphenhydramine can cause drowsiness. Others can have dry mouth/dizziness and other side effects.
You can go to a doctor and try the newer allergy medicines. Not all work for all people (Zyrtec and me do not get along, for instance). But this can be a vast improvement.
Oh, by the way, tadc, the Seldane thing - when taken with erythromycin it had this disturbing side effect called “death”, which was not a “silly thing” to those suffering from it. If you survived you typically had liver damage or required a transplant. Real bummer, ay?
A third thing to do is allergy shots. They aren’t pleasent, but for about 2/3 of those who go that route it results in a REAL improvement in the situation - like, no more need for drugs, or at least need for many fewer. But you do have to go to a doctor, make a time/money/effort commitment, and, oh yeah, there are those needles to deal with.
This may have been mentioned. There are nasal sprays. One OTC is Nasalcrom. There are also prescription ones like Flonase. One of my friends just uses some OTC saline solution in his nose, & that’s all he needs. You can search the Net for info. on this stuff, too. Hope you feel better!
