Dr. Gina Dapul-Hidalgo

Yes, to college.

And then, you know, you come back home for a break or the summers and you're like, oh, my goodness, why am I having this?

You know, the opposite of allergy is tolerance.

Yeah.

So when you're exposed to something quite frequently, then you're not going to be allergic to it because your allergic antibodies are not going to be releasing these chemicals all the time.

So if you are around something, then it's likely that you're more tolerant to it than allergic.

I wouldn't say allergy necessarily, but that you're sensitized to it.

So it was actually introduced over 100 years ago.

So in 1911, a brave British physician named Dr. Leonard Noon started purifying the grass extracts because he hypothesized that there's some toxin – they used the word toxin back then – that there was some kind of toxin that was causing these symptoms.

And that by inoculating these patients with increasing doses of grass pollen, that it would decrease the symptoms and desensitize them.

And so those were the first reports in the early 1900s that allowed us to see what we now call allergen immunotherapy and allergy shots.

That's the history behind when it started.

So now it's more refined.

There are actually companies that make the allergen.

You know, they grow the pollens, they grow the plants, and...

It's purified and extracted so that it's much more refined than when it was many, many years ago.

Yes.

So there's different protocols, but exactly what you're going through is the typical, you know, standard schedule.

So the idea is that you're starting off with very dilute doses, and then you come once a week for several months.

And then at some point when you reach this target dose or maintenance dose, then you can come every two to four weeks, depending on the protocol.