Allergies are an immune-system response to a substance that should be benign. For reasons that aren’t entirely known, your body may overreact to common allergens, such as dust or dairy, and trigger a full-fledged attack on what it considers an invader, creating symptoms such as:
Even if you’ve been allergy-free your entire life, you can develop a new allergy as an adult. And allergies you struggled with for years may seem to go away as you get older.
As an expert allergist, Catherine Fuller, MD, helps you understand your allergies and how they change or adapt over time. She diagnoses and treats seasonal, contact, and food allergies at her office in West Los Angeles, California.
Even if you’ve always been allergy-free, that doesn’t mean that you can put away the box of tissues during pollen season or that you can continue to order anything on the menu at your favorite restaurant.
New allergies sometimes arise in adults, seemingly out of nowhere. About 26% of adults in the United States have seasonal allergies, and up to 10.8% have food allergies.
As you age and your immune system weakens, you may be more susceptible to developing a new allergy. Over years or decades, exposure to allergens such as pollen or shellfish can eventually trigger a reaction.
If you’re at a seafood restaurant and you suddenly feel like your mouth and tongue are swollen or itchy, you now have a food allergy. The most common food-related allergens for adults are:
New allergies in adults are more often triggered with foods than with seasonal allergens. Among those who already have a food allergy, about half will develop a new food allergy later in life.
You might also notice that allergies that have plagued you since childhood have simply gone away. This is most likely to happen with children who had food allergies when they were younger. Allergies that children often grow out of include peanuts and tree nuts.
Adults can sometimes lose their allergies, too. This may occur when you change environments, such as after a big move or a job switch. Maybe your new office doesn’t constantly expose you to smoke or mold that used to trigger your allergies. As your body accommodates to your less polluted environment, that trigger may lose its potency and even disappear.
In short, your allergies aren’t set in stone because neither are you. Every day, you dispose of old or dead cells, repair damaged ones, and build new ones. Every day, your body adjusts to the environment around it.
Some misinformation on the internet might lead you to believe that your body cycles through allergies every 5-7 years. But there’s no such schedule. You develop or lose sensitivities to allergy triggers anytime based on your physical biology as well as the environments around you.
If you notice that you’ve developed new or different allergies, you might be able to easily accommodate changes into your routine. If you’re suddenly having an allergic reaction to wheat or dairy, for example, you simply cut out those foods, at least for a while, to see how your body adjusts.
But if you’re not sure what your triggers are and keeping an allergy diary doesn’t help, see Dr. Fuller for allergy testing. Once we identify your triggers, we design a strategy and treatment plan, which may include:
Immunotherapy is a long-term treatment that gradually exposes you to increased amounts of your most potent allergens. Eventually, your body stops going into attack mode when you encounter it. Immunotherapy is especially recommended if you’re at risk for anaphylaxis, a potentially fatal allergic reaction.
Do you find yourself having symptoms that could be related to a new allergy? Or are you uncertain what substances and foods are triggering your allergies? Schedule an appointment for allergy testing and expert treatment with Catherine Fuller, MD, today. Call 310-909-1910 or send your request online.
