Allergies - Antihistamines and How They Work

[Guest guest]

This article can be read also at http://allergy-

information.blogspot.com

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By:

In this article we're going to discuss probably the most common form

of treatment for allergy sufferers; the use of antihistamines, what

they are and how they work in the body to rid people of their

allergy symptoms.

The first question most people ask about antihistamines is what they

are. The reason is because when they see these little wonder pills

advertised they are seeing the brand name and not what the pill

actually is. The most popular brand names of antihistamines are

Clarityn, Zyrtec, Allegra and Benadryl. There are plenty more

though. The antihistamine industry is a multi billion dollar a year

industry because of all the allergy sufferers but this still doesn't

tell us what an antihistamine is.

The best way to explain what an antihistamine is and what it does is

to actually break the word down. Antihistamine is composed of two

words, anti and histamine. Anti means to be against something or act

against something. Which leaves us with what a histamine is. A

histamine is something that your body produces in defense to an

attack of allergens. It is these histamines that bring on the

terrible symptoms of sneezing, itching, watery eyes, etc. that we

suffer from when we are attacked by these allergens. Thus, an

antihistamine is something that works against the histamines that

our body produces.

Your common antihistamine comes in a little pill. How it actually

works is quite amazing. What these pills do is release a chemical in

our body that is very similar to and looks like a histamine to our

body. These look-alike histamines make our body think that we

basically have enough of these and keep the receptors in our body

from working against them. In other words they stop the histamines

in our body from working, thus relieving the symptoms.

What most people don't know is that this is not the only function of

histamines. They also play a very important role in the brain,

keeping us attentive, alert and awake. So, if we stopped all of the

histamines in the body from working we would basically fall asleep.

This can be especially dangerous when driving a car or operating

heavy machinery and in fact, this is exactly what happens when we

take old antihistamines. So if you have any of these laying around

in your home, please get rid of them and do not take them. Those

expiration dates on antihistamines are there for a reason.

The good news is, newer forms of antihistamines have a much better

effect on your allergies with less effect on your brain. How this is

accomplished is actually very simple. Some medicines barely make it

into the brain from the blood. This is actually not a good thing

with antibiotics for brain infections. But when research workers

figured this out they started to make antihistamines that also had

the same properties as antibiotics, thus making it so that very

little of the drug makes its way to the brain. If you read most

antihistamine labels today it will say right on it, " non drowsy " .

In our next article in this series we'll discuss the safety concerns

of antihistamines.

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This article can be read also at http://allergy-

information.blogspot.com