How Allergies Impact Your Overall Health and What to Do About It

Americans are certainly no strangers to allergies — 1 in 3 adults and 1 in 4 kids deal with seasonal allergies, food allergies, or eczema. 

While allergies affect people to different degrees, they can also cast a wider net over health and wellness than you might realize, depending on each person’s immune response.

As specialists in chronic conditions like allergies, our multidisciplinary team of healthcare providers here at LaSante Health Center understands the surprising and not-so-surprising ways this condition can affect your life, and we want to discuss some of that here. 

More importantly, we want to touch on ways that we can improve your wellness when you’re dealing with ongoing allergies.

Allergy basics

Before we dive into the broader impact that allergies can have on your health and wellness, we want to quickly review what we’re up against. When you have an allergy, it means that your body’s immune system registers something as harmful — even though it isn’t — and launches a defense.

These defensive responses can range from mild symptoms like sneezing or a rash to more severe responses that include anaphylactic shock.

How allergies can affect your overall health

While your body’s immediate response to an allergy is obvious, we want to take a look at some of the more indirect problems that can develop due to allergies, such as:

Fatigue

When your immune system is working in overdrive to fight off a perceived threat, it can zap your energy levels and leave you feeling fatigued.

Loss of sleep and brain fog 

If you’re dealing with seasonal allergies that are preventing you from getting good rest at night because of breathing issues, you might encounter some brain fog and feel less than sharp.

Poor nutrient absorption

Ongoing food allergies can lead to inflammation in your digestive tract that can affect how well your body absorbs nutrients.

Mental health

You shouldn’t ignore the impact that allergies can have on your mental and emotional health. For example, perhaps seasonal allergies may prevent you from getting outside and enjoying activities with friends. Or allergic skin reactions might be a source of anxiety.

Everyone experiences allergies in their own way, but our point here is that the side effects certainly aren’t confined to the immediate allergic reactions.

Tackling your allergies and improving your quality of life

To address your allergies and improve your overall quality of life, we want you to sit down with one of our medical experts so that we can figure out how the issue is affecting your life. Once we assess the broad impact, we can tailor a plan to meet your needs, which might include:

• Allergy medications to manage symptoms
• Immunotherapy to desensitize your body to specific allergens
• Trigger management strategies
• Lifestyle changes, such as de-stressing practices

It’s difficult to get into more detail here, as their allergies affect each person differently. What we do want to emphasize is that we work with you until you can live a life that isn’t held captive by your allergies.

For comprehensive and compassionate allergy care, please book an appointment online or call us at our Brooklyn, New York, clinic at 718-246-5700.  

We also welcome walk-ins during our hours of operation. We serve the Flatbush and East Flatbush, Crown Heights, Park Slope, Little Haiti, Little Caribbean, and Prospect Lefferts Gardens communities.