A Stuffed Nose = Possible Allergy

For years, I used to wake up every morning with a stuffed-up nose. I used to think I had the type of body constitution that was naturally susceptible to colds. But I wondered why, despite all my precautions to keep warm before bedtime, I would still wake up with a stuffed-up nose in the morning. I always asked myself, I don't feel like I have a cold but why is my nose stuffy?

I finally discovered the reason why about a year and a half ago. It was an allergy. Apparently, having a stuffed-up nose when you wake up in the morning is a sure sign of an allergy. So it wasn't an all-year-round cold after all. I was surprised. I always thought that allergies only affected the skin, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Ok, so I had an allergy. The next step was to find out the source of my allergy. A doctor can help you by administering a series of tests. The most common medical method is by scraping your skin and dabbing it with some substance in order to see the skin's reaction to it. Among the most commonly tested substances are grass and pollen. Sometimes, doctors can try one substance after another before finding out the source of your allergy.

The alternative to visiting a doctor is taking a simple allergy treatment that is probably available over the counter at your local drugstore.

It was my friend, Eric, who told me about these allergy treatments. As a kid, Eric has his share of allergies, especially during spring and summer when his nose was constantly runny and just wouldn't stop twitching all the time. He carried around a box of tissues everywhere he went and, as such, was the constant butt of what he called an endless stream of jokes.

After enduring those daily taunts and his stuffy nose for several years, Eric finally discovered that he was allergic to hay (he lived on a farm) and as soon as he started taking allergy treatments regularly, his nose problems stopped. And thankfully, so did the teasing of his neighbors and classmates.

Guide To Allergy Symptom

In this brief article, we will define an allergy symptom and discuss some specific systems and what they mean to you as an allergy sufferer. An allergy symptom is any symptom associated with allergies such as a running nose, itchy eyes, watery eyes, sneezing, itchy skin, and more. We will go into some detail about where a symptom comes from and why they appear as well as a brief discussion about how to cure those symptoms if time permits.

What are some of the symptoms?
Some of the most common allergy symptoms occur for the seasonal allergies such as hay fever and include the itchy watery eyes, runny nose, and sneezing aspects of allergenic symptoms. Other cases of allergies feature more serious symptoms that can be more harmful and troublesome such as absentmindedness, dizziness, trouble swallowing, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, skin rashes, vertigo, vomiting, and other serious cases of health issues that may spring from how the body deals with the allergen itself.

Airborne allergies are, however, the most common form of allergies and tend to feature the most common form of an allergy symptom as well. Most of these symptoms are related to the sinuses as the hay fever and other allergies like hay fever tend to affect those systems of the body. Sneezing, a clogged and runny nose, itchiness in the eyes and throat, coughing, postnasal drip, and swollen eyes (a symptom called "conjunctivitis") are all parts of the airborne allergy symptom repertoire.

Why do these symptoms occur?
Most times, the allergic reaction is coupled with a portion of the allergen. In other words, if the allergen is known for entering the lungs it will likely attack portions of the body related to the lungs and to breathing. An airborne allergy, thus, will likely attach itself to the breathing apparatus and my cause coughing or the nose to run because of the way it affects the system directly. There are other reasons for this that scientists studying allergy immunology are aware of, but the basics of most allergies are that they are "system attackers" in general.

How are the symptoms cured?
An allergy symptom can be cured in a number of ways depending on the actual system it affects and how drastically the body is affected. Many people can simply take, for example, an antihistamine for a hay fever type allergy and go about their day while others simply will not respond to the antihistamine. It is essentially a matter of the biological makeup of the allergy sufferer in terms of how they react to certain medications and how much medication is needed to cure the allergy symptom.