Allergy - Control Measures
Michael Marcus, MD Pediatric Pulmonary
www.DrMDK.com - is here to tell you all you need to know about control measures regarding allergies.
Step 1: Managing The Symptoms Of Allergies
The symptoms of allergies can be a runny nose, colds, and coughing. And the degree to which we treat those symptoms is dependant upon how uncomfortable the child is and how sick the child becomes.
Step 2: Mild Allergy Symptoms
Mild allergy symptoms that are tolerable don’t really require any treatment other than to minimize exposure to things that the child is allergic to.
Step 3: Severe Allergy Symptoms
More severe allergy symptoms, they require treatment because they can be predecessors to things like sinus infection and asthma.
Step 4: The House And Allergies
The house is the first place that we focus on when a kid have allergies. One of the earliest things that children become allergic to are indoor things such as dust, mold, and pets. Eliminating exposure to these things indoors then is a very important part of improving allergy symptoms.
Step 5: Dust And Allergies
Controlling dust is one of our major focuses. We’ve learned that dust and the constituents of dust is a very important trigger to allergies of children and measures to control dust exposure are things that we review with parents frequently.
Step 6: Eliminating Dust
Some of these measures can be things as easy as cleaning more often. You’d want to clean the house frequently, especially focusing on the child’s bedroom. Try to minimize the use of rugs and carpeting since these tend to accumulate and attract dust more easily and are more difficult to keep dust free.
Eliminating stuffed animals from the children’s room and from their bed is another important thing. And a very important place where dust is accumulating and children are exposed is in the mattress, the box spring, the pillows, and the bedding.
For mattresses, box spring, and pillows, we recommend having you put these things into mattress covers that are made of either a plastic or vinyl and that totally zip around.
By doing this, the mattress is fully encased in the cover and any dust that has accumulated in the mattress is not exposed to the child.
Bedding should be cleaned frequently, and should be changed every 2 to 3 days.
Changing your bedding once every 1 to 2 weeks would not be sufficient for maintaining good dust control.
