I’m fortunate to be in pretty good health. My biggest challenge is, and has been, really bad allergies. These are most troublesome in the spring when plants do their sex thing via pollen. I bear them no ill will, they are just doing what their DNA is programmed to do.
In the mid 80’s I had allergy testing done and I took allergy shots for about two years. An inconvenient process involving going to the doctor’s office weekly, getting 2 shots in each arm, and having to wait there 45 minutes after the shots to make sure there’s no bad reaction. These did help quite a bit. After 2 years the benefit plateaued so I discontinued the treatment.
I recently became aware of another option, called Allergy Easy (http://www.allergyeasy.com but this site is almost content free). In this system the serum is taken orally instead of by injection and one does this at home. Instead of testing with hundreds of allergens and formulating a custom serum for each person, Allergy Easy gives everyone all the allergens. The ones you are allergic to you get desensitized to, the others don’t affect you. Quite a simplification, and as William of Occam said, the simplest solution is the best one. This is much less costly too.
Today I went for my 3 shot test. The nurse gave me 3 injections of the 170 allergen material of varying strengths. As soon as she finished she said “You really are allergic!”. Yes, I knew that. The spots got red and itchy. The doctor measured them after 20 minutes and determined what my starting dose of the serum should be. I went home with 4 bottles, each 5 times stronger than the previous one. I go back to the doctor for a follow up in late February.
I’ll keep readers updated on my experience with Allergy Easy.
Dagny's Desk 