If you know someone who experiences seasonal allergies, you may be aware of the fact that this time of the year is particularly challenging. As the flowers, grass and trees bloom during the summer months, an abundance of pollen and various allergens circulate throughout the air.
In the United States statistics indicate that as much as 18 million people experience allergic rhinitis and hay fever as a result of the pollens from grass, mold and weeds. It’s also worth noting that some people experience environmental allergies to things such as dust mites and animals.
While you may be aware of this, did you know that people’s allergies change? Even though you may have never had allergies, did you know that this could be the first year that you experience allergies as an adult?
Emerging Evidence
Doctors themselves are unaware of the total amount of adults that get diagnosed with allergies yearly. But, statistics that were gathered from the American College of Allergy and Immunology indicates that more and more adults are experiencing adult-onset allergies for the first time in their lives.
Kevin McGrath – an MD allergist who works in Wethersfield, CT, proclaimed that a vast majority of people get allergies for the first time as a child. But, he said he also sees an onset in adults around the age of 30-50. In fact, he proclaims that based on his personal work experience with affected patients, he has seen people in their 70s and 60s who never had asthma or allergy symptoms, suddenly develop it.
How Common Is It?
Doctors proclaim that the population is living longer than they used to, as a result of medical advances. In this aging population, more and more allergists are treating adults who developed symptoms for the first time. However, experts also highlight that some people may have had mild symptoms when they were younger that went unnoticed.
As they get older, they naturally became more aware of the signals their body was sending and it is believed that some adults may have had it as a child, but they were not officially diagnosed with it until they became much older and more aware of the signals their body was sending them.
What Causes You To Develop Allergies In The First Place?
Allergies typically appear early on in your life, but it can develop at any point and become a lifelong issue. Genetics plays a critical role in who eventually develops allergies and having a family history of this condition, places you at a significantly higher risk of developing it at some point in your life.
But in general, individuals develop allergies when their body perceives various substances like pollen, hair, and mold as being harmful. Once the brain becomes aware that you have come into contact with some of these substances, it awakens the immune system and subsequently causes it to release histamine.
Histamine is a chemical which is directly responsible for all allergy-related symptom. Experts believe that many people do not develop allergies until later on in life because when you are young you have a robust and healthy immune system that doesn’t overact to allergens. But, as you get older, your immune system gets less efficient and causes it to overreact to the aforementioned allergens, causing you to develop adult-onset allergies.
