Can I live with a dog if I am allergic?
Rasheed Johnson
2025-07-31 21:28:56
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Allergies occur when your immune system reacts to a foreign substance. Pet allergies often are triggered by exposure to pet urine or saliva. These allergies also can be triggered by dander, the dead flakes of skin that an animal sheds. To reduce the effects of a pet allergy, an important first step for your daughter is to encourage hand-washing after petting the dog to minimize allergen exposure to the eyes or nose. Another key component is to keep at least one place in your home dander-free. It may be best to keep the dog out of your daughter's bedroom, since it is likely that she spends at least eight hours of each day there. A combination of allergy medication and environmental changes often can help control pet allergies, making it unnecessary to remove a family pet from the home. In almost all cases, the physical and emotional benefits pets can offer children far outweigh the issues allergies might cause.
Savanna McGlynn
2025-07-31 20:55:20
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You'd be surprised to know how many people with allergies that aren't life-threatening are able to live happily with their pets. In many cases, the benefits of having a pet outweigh the drawbacks of pet allergies. If your or a family member's allergies are simply miserable, but not life-threatening, there are many ways to reduce indoor allergens and allergy symptoms so you and your pet can live together more comfortably. Create an "allergy free" zone in your home—preferably the allergic person's bedroom—and strictly prohibit the pet's access to it. Use a HEPA air cleaner, and consider using impermeable covers for the mattress and pillows. Use HEPA air cleaners throughout the rest of the home, and avoid dust-and-dander-catching furnishings such as cloth curtains and blinds and carpeted floors. Bathe your pet weekly to reduce the level of allergy-causing dander. A combination of approaches—medical control of symptoms, good housecleaning methods and immunotherapy—is most likely to succeed in allowing an allergic person to live with pets.
Sheila Cummings
2025-07-31 20:34:37
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Many people are often told by their caregivers that if you’re allergic to cats or dogs which are the most common that it’s best just to find new homes for your pets. In reality in this country most people really don’t want to get rid of their pets and quite frankly even when they do many of their friends and family have have cats and dogs too. So the question becomes if you can’t avoid your pet or your animal then what are your alternatives. Well, first of all, avoidance can be in many phases, but things like room purifiers, particularly in your bedroom, I would definitely keep the pets out of your bedroom if possible. That can be a very good first step. After that things like HEPA filters or air purifiers can be very helpful. They’ve been shown to be very effective particularly with cat allergy; a little bit less so with dog allergy, but also work well if avoidance strategies don’t work. Then we move on to medications. Medications like, oh, any number of antihistamines or medications like the leukotriene inhibitor, such as Singulair, can be very effective at helping to kind of soften many of those allergic symptoms, especially if you can be taking them on a regular basis. If that doesn’t work or doesn’t work well enough, then we consider things like allergy shots or immunotherapy. Very effective at managing both cat and dog allergies. And if taken long enough, they can practically be curative. And basically the end goal is really to see if you can still maintain and manage your allergies and your allergy types of symptoms while at the same time having your loving pets around for as long as you’d like them to be.
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