Understanding is your most important tool in coping with your allergy and asthma symptoms. This book can help you in the most fundamental aspect of this health problem: environmental control. This book is not meant to replace medical diagnosis and treatment. If your physician has recommended that you follow some of the suggestions in this book, you should comply. If you are currently under the care of a physician for allergies or asthma, be sure to inform him or her of any changes you make in your environment.

Compared with other diseases, allergies and asthma, for the vast majority of patients, do not pose life-threatening health risks. That’s the good news. On the debit side, however, bouts of sneezing, itching, wheezing, runny nose, and so on can make life miserable. Allergy and asthma victims have good reason to complain of a poorer quality of life. Their main goal is relief of symptoms. Allergies and asthma are complicated health problems with many causative factors, and each person’s ailment is highly individualized. For example, there has been much debate about the definition of asthma.

You may be reading this book because you or a family member (often a child) has asthma and you want to take control and enjoy a normal life and experience no dangerous “asthma attacks”. Conversely a great many people do not know they have asthma and you may want to find out more about this health condition for yourself or a child. There are in fact a whole array of ambiguous symptoms from breathlessness, wheezing, chest tightness, coughing to cold symptoms that may or may not be asthma. Each person’s asthma condition is unique in both the symptoms and causes.

Allergy rhinitis is the most common form of allergies. Rhinitis relates to all the symptoms of the mucous membranes of the nose associated such as sneezing, itching, nasal discharge, and congestion.

More than 20% of adults and up to 40% of children suffer from allergic rhinitis, (the most common form of allergies), the intermittent or persistent symptoms include sneezing, rhinorrhea, nasal congestion, watery eyes, and itching (pruritus).

The economic and health ramifications are allergies are far reaching, more than 3.5 million work days and 2 million missed school days per year have been reported.

“Severe Allergic Reaction", “life threatening allergy” – sounds a little scary, right?  However dramatic you may think the title of this book is, it’s not just meant to frighten you.  It’s a way of getting your attention focused on a health risk issue that is actually life threatening in a short period of time (minutes sometimes) for you or your child.

Essentially, anaphylaxis (pronounce an-uh-fuh-LAK-sis) is usually brought on by a food allergy (often peanuts) and insect stings or bites.  There are other causes, too, such as medications, latex (balloons, elastic, kitchen cleaning gloves, adhesive bandages, condoms, elastic bands), and sometimes even exercise.