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Symptoms, Their Causes & Cures: Sneezing

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Sneezing

WHEN TO SEE YOUR DOCTOR

* Your sneezing fits recur and aren't helped by home remedies or over-the-counter antihistamines.

What Your Symptom Is Telling You

Here comes the ah-choo-choo train. But you'd rather not be the conductor. You'd rather stand on the platform at the station and wave good-bye as the ah-choo-choo train chugs off into the horizon.

You can, but first you have to understand what causes those nasal blasts.

A sneeze is simply the nose's response to an allergen or irritant, says Elliott Middleton, Jr., M.D., professor of medicine and pediatrics at the State University of New York at Buffalo and an allergist at Buffalo General Hospital. Sneezers are just more sensitive to one or more of the many things that fly up everybody's nostrils. Some people's noses ignore them. Other people sneeze out the irritant and get on with their lives. In people who are allergic, the body releases histamine as a response to the microscopic invaders. Besides making them sneeze up a storm, histamine afflicts them with a runny, itchy nose; nasal and chest congestion; and red, teary eyes.

Those sneeze-causing allergens include pollen, grass, mold, pet dander and dust mites, says Dr. Middleton. The most common irritants are smoke or perfume, says Susan R. Wynn, M.D., an allergist in private practice with Fort Worth Allergy and Asthma Associates in Texas.

Colds and upper respiratory infections can bring on sneezing, along with a host of other symptoms. A quick change in temperature, such as walking into an air-conditioned room from the afternoon heat, can also make you sneeze. Expectant mothers frequently complain of sneezing and stuffiness when hormonal changes produce what's called rhinitis of pregnancy. And some people are compelled to sneeze when their eyes meet up with bright sunlight.

For a clue to the cause of continued bouts of sneezing, Dr. Wynn says to take your temperature and check your nose. If you have no fever but your nose is itchy, you have an allergy. If your nose isn't itchy or if you're running a temperature, you probably have a cold or some other upper respiratory infection.

Symptom Relief

When you start to ah . . . ah . . . ah . . . , don't restrain the choo. "It's bad to suppress a sneeze," Dr. Wynn says. Letting that strong blast of air implode into your head rather than explode into a hanky can blow bacteria into your sinuses or your middle ear. You also could pop your eardrums, she warns. Get on with the Gesundheits and try these more effective ways of ending your sneezes.

Play Dick Tracy. "The major form of treatment for a sneeze is to discover and avoid the perpetrator of your sneezes," says Dr. Middleton. If you're alert, you'll eventually make associations between what you breathe and when you sneeze.

He says the sneezing can be stopped easily if your detective work turns up a teddy bear or a neighbor's pet cat as the culprit. It's much more difficult if the criminal is as common as pollen.

Try an antihistamine. Despite the different names and claims, over-the-counter antihistamines all possess about the same anti-allergy effectiveness to dry up your nose and stop the itching. All of them can also cause drowsiness, especially if taken with alcohol or certain other medications, Dr. Middleton says.

Time your dose. If you're going on a picnic and are allergic to grass, or if you're about to begin spring cleaning and dust provokes nasty nasal outbursts, take an antihistamine before the pollutant sends your symptoms soaring, Dr. Wynn recommends. "Antihistamines work better before your body starts releasing histamines," she says.

Mask your allergy. If you have to be outside to cut the grass, rake the leaves or pull weeds, and you can't unload the chore on someone else, wear a filter mask, Dr. Wynn says. "It won't prevent the allergens from reaching you completely, but a mask will cut it down," she says.

Shut off the outside world. Maybe you don't have to hibernate all year round, keep yourself barricaded inside and receive provisions through the crack under the door—but you should keep your windows closed and turn on a fan or the air-conditioning. "That way, you can create a relatively pollen-free environment that you can retreat to," Dr. Wynn says.

Reschedule your rounds. Pollen counts in the air are higher early in the day and decrease during the afternoon, Dr. Wynn points out. "Try taking your jog or running your errands later on," she says.

Expose your skin. If you can't figure out what's causing your sneezing fits or if you can't control them, visit the doctor for an allergy test, Dr. Middleton says. Skin tests are more sensitive than blood tests in determining what you're allergic to. Depending on the results and your response to medication, you may have to undergo a series of allergy shots.

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