WASHINGTON — The sun is shining, the breezes are blowing, and that means spring allergy season is upon us.
The local pollen count is already high for elm and oak trees, and the biggest problem is moving in next.
“Oak trees actually account for 50 percent of the tree pollen in the D.C. area,” says Dr. Rachel Schreiber, an allergist in Rockville. “If you have an oak tree pollen allergy, even if that is the only tree allergen that you have, that is a big deal here.”
In states to the south, where pollen starts to spread a bit earlier, allergy sufferers are already talking about a “pollen vortex” this spring.
Schreiber says as the days warm up, a bad allergy season seems to be shaping up in our region, though it is difficult to guess just how extensive local suffering will be.
“Weather is a huge variable and we all know how hard it is to predict weather,” she explains, emphasizing that pollen production is very weather dependent.
All the same, Schreiber says in her decade of practice in Maryland she has never seen a low pollen season.
“Every year, people say ‘Isn’t this the worst pollen season?” And it feels like it is the worst because we really do get inundated in this area,” she says, noting that there are a lot of deciduous trees sending large amounts of pollen into the air.
For people with severe grass and ragweed allergies, trouble is still a few months away. Grasses come in around May, peak around Memorial Day and continue through June.
But Schreiber says there is good reason for them to visit an allergist now.
There are new medications for these specific allergies that are just as effective as shots, meaning fewer trips to the doctor and less discomfort.
These new tablets – two of which have been approved for grasses and one for ragweed — are a form of immunotherapy and effectively desensitize the body to a specific allergen.
They are safe and effective, but because of the way they work, patients have to start taking them 12 weeks before the season starts. And that means anyone who wants to try them this year needs to be taking them now.
