Allergies and Nose Sprays

Yes the spray could be causing her stuffy nose. So could the allergies.

My son is on shots, I was on shots. The need for shots depends on the extremeness of your allergy. There are times when OTC stuff isn't strong enough. My son has had success with the shots and is down to 3 items from 7+ out of 30 that he still has a problem with. He has been on shots for 7 years (I think. I've lost count). He also has asthma and we have him down to one daily medicine for that, plus his rescue inhaler for when he gets a cold. He gets retested once a year.

For the shots schedule, we went 1x a week each weeks for a few months, then every other week. The 2x a week is usually just a suggestion to help you reach the maintenance level faster. Check with your insurance about the cost of allergy shots. We have a copay with ours, so just double check before you sign up. We also had to pay a portion of the serum, which can be $300+. At one point our allergist was charging over $1000 for the serum which he has everyone have 2 bottles of. One for just the pollen and one for anything else.

Local bee pollen helped our family SO much. We sprinkle a little on cereal or something daily and we do no more sprays, etc. Some people use local honey for positive effects as well.

We do take 24 hr Zyrtec every morning as well.

Good luck.

I take alfalfa tablets every day and it helps quite a bit. For a child the tabs could be ground up and put in applesauce or yogurt.

Absolutely NO HONEY for children under one year old or so, but if your child is older a little local honey daily could help too, as the poster before me suggested.

the sprays help me. but do a trial.. stop the sprays for at least 7-10 days.. write down how she is doing..

restart the sprays and give for at least 1-0 days and see if she is better or worse.

some folks get good results form over the counter Claritin, allegra and zyrtec for kids. I thought zyrtec was too drying. but you might want to try one of the liquid drugs to see if that helps.

I had to experiment with a few different nasal sprays until I found one that worked. I found Nasacort to work the best for me and give me the fewest side effects. But what I have found that regardless of which one I use if I try stopping it for a while, I will get a bit of dry nose leading to some bloody noses.

If she is stuffed up, then the medicine may not even be getting up there. Try to have her blow her nose well (if she isn't already) before doing the spray. Also, you can use a saline spray to help get rid of the stuffiness before doing the medicine. It may also help keep it moist.

I haven't done allergy shots, but my parents weren't really on top of the allergy thing so I suspect they weren't aware of the choice to get shots. As an adult, I've opted out because the statistics I was given for potential improvement as an adult weren't that great and my allergy medications do a good job. (BTW, I'm pretty much allergic to everything outdoors.)

My sister tried allergy shots as an adult and saw some improvement, but she was allergic to so much stuff that she kept having reactions to the shots themselves and they were having a hard time upping the dose. She decided to stop.

My son (4 years old) is showing signs of outdoor allergies so I will consider shots for him (which I'm sure he won't like). I've heard they work better with children so if he can have his allergies addressed as a child and not have to deal with taking the medicines that I have to on a daily basis, then it's worth trying (in my opinion).

Sounds like the sprays aren't working. And those allergy shot regimens are really long and involved. 4 years? Yikes. I got rid of my allergies in 4 months using nutritional supplements, and friends of mine had children with severe allergies (inhalers, nebulizers, suggested ear tubes and general misery) and their kids are all symptom free in 3-5 months. The parents had all done the shots plus meds, and didn't want to put their kids through that if it wasn't necessary. The allergists were very impressed. Maybe you'd like to try something different before committing to the shots? Happy to give you more details if that appeals to you.

My son is doing the shots. He did start off at 2x week for a while, then to once per week. He has been at once every other week for a while and occasionally does every 3 weeks now (usually when the doc is closed for some reason and rescheduling doesn't work out until the following week).

It seemed like it took forever to actually do anything... but then, one day I just kinda noticed that he doesn't need tissues anymore. He also was using the OTC stuff (zyrtec/allegra) daily in conjunction with the shots... but about 3 months ago, stopped using those completely. He's still virtually symptom free. Even this time of year when everyone is complaining about allergies... He's been doing it for almost 3 years now. And yes, we were told around 4 years also.

The younger they start them, the less time it can take (tween-age vs. adult age). Our son was 12 when he started...he'll be 15 this summer. For adults, I think they say it is more 5-6 years.