3 New Ways to Calm Allergy Symptoms

 
To Lower Your Risk, Put Down Your Drink
If you want to avoid allergies, cut back on alcohol. A Danish study of 5,870 women found that the risk of nonseasonal allergies (such as sniffles due to dust mites or cats) increased 3 percent for each drink consumed weekly. The study showed that women who drank more than 14 alcoholic beverages per week were 78 percent more likely to develop these allergies than those who had less than one drink weekly. Unclear: whether drinking has the same nose-clogging effect in men.

Spray Away Your Cough
Allergies plus postnasal drip equals chronic cough. Here's an easy fix: Use a nasal spray. Among patients who'd suffered a cough caused by postnasal drip for an average of seven years, a combo of an antihistamine spray and a steroid spray brought relief for 76 percent of subjects. "Doctors prescribe nasal sprays for nasal congestion but not for a cough," says researcher Brian Levine, MD, of the Cough Center, in Laguna Hills, California. Talk to your doc if you clear your throat often, get hoarse, have a sore throat, or simply suffer from a chronic cough. "Combination nasal-spray therapy can dramatically improve all these conditions," says Dr. Levine.

A Tab Instead of a Shot?
While pills and sprays calm allergy symptoms, only immunotherapy (aka allergy shots) offers lasting relief -- and may prevent the development of allergy-triggered asthma. Yet only about 5 percent of those who could be helped go through the years of doctor visits and dozens of injections. So this news is exciting: In a recent German study, a daily tablet of grass pollen placed under the tongue reduced hay fever symptoms in children by 24 percent, compared with a placebo, and asthma symptoms by 64 percent. Under-the-tongue tablets and drops have been used in Europe for decades. If the new results are borne out, "sublingual immunotherapy" may be available here by 2010.