Dr. Gina Dapul-Hidalgo

So the idea behind allergies is that your body is overreacting to something harmless, right?

So we're not supposed to be allergic to pollens, cats, dogs, foods, drugs.

But if you are, your immune system encounters these allergens and it's thinking, danger, danger, when it's really something harmless.

You usually had to have been exposed to the allergen in the past.

And it's that first exposure where your body ends up making allergic antibodies.

what we call IgE or immunoglobulin E antibodies to those allergens.

Most patients, we end up recommending things like antihistamines, nasal sprays, eye drops, really more symptomatic treatments to help decrease your symptoms so you can, you know, be around the allergen and be somewhat okay.

Claritin, Zyrtec, Allegra, they're really temporary kinds of treatment options.

The idea is that you build tolerance over time.

By giving you what you're allergic to, you get desensitized to those allergens that you're being treated with.

Unlike medicines, which only take care of the symptoms, allergy shots are actually training your immune system to react differently when you're exposed to the allergens.

Yes.

So how it works is that we're actually introducing these allergens into your skin.

There's different, you know, forms of testing, but the main common one is what's called a skin prick.

If your body has made those allergic IgE antibodies, it recognizes it, it binds to it, and then within 15-20 minutes, you get a little red itchy spot at the site of where those allergens are.

So what happens when you encounter the allergen is that your body is exposed to that allergen.

Let's just use cat, for example.

And then the IgE is waiting for its partner, and then it binds to that allergen.

That IgE, again, is an immunoglobulin E, which is the allergic antibody.

And then within 15, 20 minutes, it releases chemicals like histamine, prostaglandins, leukotrienes.