How to Understand Allergy Symptoms

Allergies can have a range of symptoms from itchy eyes to skin rashes. Watch in this video as Dr. Peter Saul describes what an allergy is, the symptoms of allergy and how you can tell if your symptoms are caused by an allergy or some other factor.

Symptoms of Allergy. Dr. Peter Saul: They can range from respiratory symptoms typically with dusts and with molds and pollens. Things like itchy nose, sneezing, itchy eyes, triggering off asthma attacks. And then with food typically, there tingling in the mouth, swelling of the mouth, rashes around the mouth, vomiting; sometimes diarrhea. The other type of allergy is skin allergy. Some people are allergic to things like nickel and other chemicals and they'll develop rashes on the skin following exposure. Host: What is an allergy? Allergy is an abnormal response to some sort of environmental agent that we come in contact with. But when we have allergy, what's happening is that our bodies have been switched to treat the foreign protein as a potentially hostile chemical or a potential attacker and because of that, the body responds in the way that we recognize as an allergic reaction. Host: How do I know it's not a cold? The thing about allergy is that it's a repetitive type of symptom. So for example, everybody gets a cold and everybody sneezes from time to time but not everybody gets sneezing and a runny nose from for example, April to August every year. Not everybody gets sneezy if they change the beds. It's something that's a bit actually ordinary but it's something that's repetitive and it's produced by a predictable outside influence.