Navigating allergy season can be a humbling experience, even if you’ve been here many times before. You can take your medications as prescribed and still wind up with a stuffy nose, itchy eyes, and cough, making it fair to wonder where you’re going wrong.
“If your symptoms don’t improve or are worsened through the initial few weeks of spring season, that’s a sign that your medications are not effective enough,” Aleena Banerji, MD, a Mass General Brigham allergist, clinical director of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and professor at Harvard Medical School, tells SELF.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to switch medications. Instead, you may want to consider something called “dosing flexibility,” where you ramp up the dosage of your medication to meet the conditions you’re dealing with, David Corry, MD, professor of immunology, allergy and rheumatology at Baylor College of Medicine, tells SELF.
As you can imagine, there’s a lot to unpack here. And, of course, you should only do this with the help of a healthcare provider. Here’s how allergists recommend navigating this process.
Signs your current allergy medication regimen isn’t working for you
There are some people who feel like a million bucks after they start allergy medication, but that’s not the case for everyone.
“The best indication of efficacy of allergy medications is simply, are you feeling better?” Dr. Corry says. (He says that doctors will usually view “better” as an 80% or more reduction in your allergy symptoms.)
Punam Thakkar, MD, associate professor of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, tells SELF that “if your treatment is working, you should notice meaningful relief.” But symptoms that interfere with your ability to sleep, work, go to school, or your daily activities are red flags that your current treatment plan isn’t enough, Dr. Thakkar says.
Another red flag that your medication isn’t doing its job, per Dr. Banerji: Your symptoms return a few hours after taking the medication. “If this happens, it may mean the medication type, dosage, or timing isn’t right for your specific allergies, and it’s worth reassessing your treatment plan with your allergist,” she says.
Doctors may recommend increasing your dosage under certain circumstances.
There are a lot of reasons why your current allergy regimen isn’t working for you, including that you may need a different treatment or that an additional medication may be helpful. But it’s also possible that your dosing just isn’t right, Dr. Corry says. If you like your current medication or have already stocked up and don’t want to toss what you’ve got, he says it’s worth talking with your doctor about whether increasing the dose is an option.
