Understanding Adult-Onset Allergies
While we often think of allergies as starting in childhood, adults aren't immune from first-time allergies. Here's what do to if you suspect allergy symptoms.
Those lucky enough to skate through childhood and adolescence without
Understanding Adult-Onset Allergies
While we often think of allergies as starting in childhood, adults aren't immune from first-time allergies. Here's what do to if you suspect allergy symptoms.
Those lucky enough to skate through childhood and adolescence without itchy, watering eyes aren't immune to allergies for life. Developing adult-onset allergies — from hay fever to food allergies — is possible no matter how old you are.
Allergies develop when your immune system mistakenly identifies a substance such as pollen, mold, animal dander, or food as harmful. That substance is referred to as an allergen. The allergen stimulates cells of your immune system to release certain chemicals, such as histamine, which then lead to allergy symptoms.
Depending on the allergen involved, allergy symptoms can involve the nasal passages, eyes, sinuses, airways, skin, and digestive system. Reactions can vary from mild to severe and, in some cases, cause anaphylaxis, a life-threatening condition.
Adult-Onset Allergies: Why Now?
There's a lot experts still don't know about allergies, including what triggers them. Experts do know, however, that the prevalence of allergic rhinitis, also called hay fever, in the United States and around the world is increasing.
Most theories as to why allergy symptoms have increased focus on "higher concentrations of airborne pollutants, rising dust mite populations, less ventilation in homes and offices, dietary factors, and sedentary lifestyles," explains Deborah Pockross, MD, a physician at Kenilworth Medical Associates in Kenilworth, Ill., and staff doctor at Northshore University Health System in Evanston.
Another theory is the hygiene hypothesis — meaning "a more sanitary environment [and less exposure to bacteria] increases susceptibility to allergic disease by suppressing the natural development of the immune system," Dr. Pockross adds. In other words, our living conditions and food are so clean they don't offer our immune systems enough to do, so our systems overreact to allergens instead.
Who Is at Risk for Adult-Onset Allergies?
Most people who are diagnosed with allergies as adults likely had an allergic episode earlier in life that they don't remember. Often allergies follow a predictable course: eczema and food allergies in babies and toddlers, then hay fever symptoms in mid-to-late childhood. Allergy symptoms may fade during the teen years, only to return when you're an adult.
Some people, however, do experience allergy symptoms for the first time in adulthood. This most often happens in your twenties, thirties, and forties rather than in later years. "As we age, our immune system does weaken — that is why more seniors get pneumonia than 20-year-olds," says Anthony J. Weido, MD, president of Allergy & Asthma Associates, a multi-location practice in the greater Houston, Texas, and Gulf Coast area. "As the immune system weakens, the hyper-allergic reaction also weakens," he says.
Any type of allergy can occur in adulthood, including hay fever, pet allergies, and dust mite and mold allergies as well as insect bite, drug, and food allergies. Again, experts aren't entirely sure why this happens, but theories include being exposed to allergens when the immune system is weakened, such as during an illness or pregnancy; not being exposed to a high enough level of the allergen as a chil