Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Antihistamines

Mum's better! She had intestinal ulcers and partial intestinal blockage, both caused by surgeons doing a crappy job. No fear though, blockage is cleared, and antibiotics are clearing the ulcers. Thanks for the kind words!

So I'm back for a while. Gonna do a quick update on Antihistamines, and then later I'll do the other two.

Antihistamines

What are they?

Antihistamines are drugs used to treat allergic reactions. They generally act the same, and different drugs are usually just the antihistamine in different strengths or in combination with other drugs.

How do they work?

To understand how Antihistamines work, we must first know what a Histamine is.

Histamines are the part of the immune response "team" that deals with the inflammatory response. Histamines bond to histamine receptors. This bond is what causes the inflammatory response.
The inflammatory response is the stage in the immune response that increases the temperature and causes the antibodies in your blood to enter the tissue, so that they can fight off infection.
Antibodies(leukocytes) are like the swat team of your body. Without these guy, your body would never survive against any infection. I'd like to go further into how these guys work later, but this should do for now.

Now, you're probably asking, "If histamines are part of the immune response, why would I want to use antihistamines to go against them?"

Well, allergies are defined as an adverse reaction to something that is generally harmless. 
Example: See, somewhere in your DNA, there is a mix-up that makes your body think, "tree pollen=  BAD." So when your body comes into contact with tree pollen, your body treats it as though it were fighting off the worst infection imaginable. Now your body is putting everything it has into destroying this "infection," and this can be annoying or harmful to the body.

This is where Antihistamines come in.

When your body first senses the tree pollen, it begins with the histamine response, inflaming the area(usually the nose). Remember how we said histamines bonded to histamine receptors? All antihistamines do is bond to those receptors before the histamines can. This prevents/decreases the inflammatory response.

That's it.

Pretty cool, huh?

Notes:
-Some antihistamines can cause drowsiness.
-Antihistamines are not nearly enough to fight off severe allergies, such as peanut allergies. Your doctor may give you an EpiPen, a dosage of Epinephrine, which is used to fight the reaction. This stuff saves lives!
-Usually, to prevent allergies throughout the day, if you are allergic to basic things like tree pollen, it's best to take some antihistamine every day to prevent the reaction. I take Zyrtec for my mold and grass allergies. 

7 comments:

  1. Very informative, keep this up!

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  2. thanks for clearing some missinformation i had about Antihistamines :)

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  3. wow this is very informative, great post man

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  4. Good to hear your mom is doing better, hope that continues. Great info as well, nice one.

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  5. The antihistamines cause drowsiness because they're alpha-blockers. This is why some doctors like to prescribe them as a sleeping aid. Or against some mild cases of angst.

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  6. I am only allergic to cats so I just stay away from them.

    thanks for explaining histamines though it was a great post.

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