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 
Tombo said:
I’ve also heard that eating honey made by local bees (if you can find it) helps to alleviate allergic symptoms. Due, I suppose, to the fact that they have all that flower sex juice in there from the local vegetation. Thankfully my own allergies aren’t bad enough to warrant investigation.
Dagny Gromer said:
I’ve tried something called “bee pollen” in the past and it was ineffective.
VJ said:
My daughter is taking this stuff and it’s very expensive and we just got a letter saying insurance will no longer cover it. I’m kind of suspicious since you have to go to the dr’s office to get it; not available at a pharmacy. Is it working for you, and is it costly? I was advised by her doctor that they’re going to discount it to $155 per mo since Blue Cross will no longer cover. What’s your experience with this? Thanks.
VJ
Dagny Gromer said:
I recently got my insurance EOB for my first visit, they (Blue Cross / Blue Shield PPO) and they paid all but my office visit deductible. The doctor is part of the PPO plan. So I’m happy with the financial aspect.
You get it from a doctor for the same reason alergy shot serum comes from a doctor’s office not a pharmacy – the possibility of a bad reaction. Plus a doc’s office is a small business.
AllergyEasy is a 2 year project. So far I have not seen much change. I’ve had one minor reaction to the serum, nothing serious though. A year from now I’ll know to what degree it worked. I will consider it a success if I have to take allergy meds only in the spring. Now I take them year round.
Desiree said:
Hello. I ran across your blog and was interested to see how your experience went since it looks like this was a little over a year ago? My mom has horrible allergies year around, and will be starting acupuncture next week to see if this helps. We just recently were referred to a friend’s doctor’s website, as they started to advertise AllergyEasy. Could you update us with your status? If this helped, I would love to pass it along to my poor mom. She’s been experiencing horrible sleep during the spring as well, due to waking up to blow her nose and sneeze 😦
Thanks for any input! Hope this worked for you:)
Dagny Gromer said:
It’s been over a year, and now where I live the trees are producing pollen. My allergies are greatly reduced. I’m using much less OTC allergy meds than usual. I am also using a nasal rinse (OTC) twice a day. I am much improved.