Tired of living with allergies and the medications needed to keep your symptoms at bay? And what if your medications don’t even help anymore? It could be time to consider allergy shots. This treatment, also known as immunotherapy, is the closest option to a cure when it comes to managing conditions, like:
What sets immunotherapy apart from other treatments is that it doesn’t mask your symptoms. Instead, it works to change how your body responds to specific allergens.
Our team at Advanced Allergy & Asthma in Ogden, Utah, offered these insights into allergy shots and when to consider rush therapy.
One of the most appealing aspects of immunotherapy is how it desensitizes your immune system to the allergens triggering your symptoms. We accomplish this by introducing allergens to your body in controlled doses. This process builds up your tolerance to these triggers, which relieves your allergic response.
Immunotherapy relies on a two-phase approach.
The first phase involves the buildup phase, where we gradually increase the strength of your injections until you reach your maximum dose.
The second phase is for maintenance. This stage of immunotherapy trains your immune system to stay desensitized to the allergen indefinitely. Phase two can last up to five years.
Our team offers both allergy shot approaches: traditional allergy shots or rush therapy. What sets these two approaches apart is the amount of time devoted to the buildup stage, or phase one.
When you get traditional allergy shots, the buildup phase involves getting regular shots over 4-6 months. During this process, we slowly increase the strength of your injection until you reach the maximum dose.
In the beginning, you usually receive injections once a week. Over time, these shots become more spread out until you only need an injection once a month.
The rush therapy method significantly shortens the buildup phase of the allergy shot process. So, instead of getting injections over several months, you receive them over a shorter period. In some cases, they could even occur every 15-60 minutes over one to three days.
As a result, unlike traditional immunotherapy, rush therapy means you reach the maintenance allergy shot phase within days, not months.
Rush therapy offers numerous advantages for most allergy sufferers, including:
However, they do come with the risk of an allergic reaction. As a result, rush therapy requires spending an entire day at our office so we can monitor your response to the allergy shots. We also don’t recommend any allergy shots for people with food allergies.
After your rush therapy appointment, you still need routine injections as part of the maintenance phase. Remember, this period can last three to five years, but the frequency of your injections decreases with time.
Curious to see if rush therapy is right for you? Contact Advanced Allergy & Asthma by calling or booking an appointment online today.
