Top 10 Tips For Managing Grass Allergy:

1. Let’s get obvious: don’t mow the lawn, delegate. Ah, you live alone, there’s no one to delegate to. In that case, allergists advise Allergic Living that it’s best to: take an antihistamine before mowing and wear an N95 protective mask.

2. Keep the lawn short, that way, it’s not pollinating. (Grass pollinates through the air, not by insects like showy flowers. This is why it gets so easily into the nasal passages and eye ducts.)

3. Check your local forecast and pollen count every day. On high grass pollen count days, head for the mall or take in a movie; not a good time to be outdoors. Damper days are better: the wetness holds the pollen on the ground.

4. Cool  your home with a combination of closed blinds and drapes and air conditioning. It’s important to keep the windows shut to keep out grass pollen, which pollinates for most of the summer.

5. Change your clothes when you coming in from a few hours outside. Washing your clothes frequently will reduce your personal pollen load.

6. Change the clothes frequently of babies and toddlers, so you don’t inhale the pollen they’ve picked up. Also, wipe off the dog’s fur and bathe the animal (more frequently than he’ll care for) during the summer.

7. The heck with that outdoors smell: do not hang out your just-washed laundry in the pollen-filled summer breeze.

8. Don’t tough it out, seek medication relief and enjoy your summer. Start by trying a newer, non-sedating antihistamine for daily control during the height of grass pollen season.

9. If antihistamines alone don’t help enough, visit your allergist and ask about nasal corticosteroid sprays. These can be highly effective. You may also be a candidate for allergy shots (immunotherapy), for relief in the years to come. For eye symptoms, your allergist can prescribe good eye drops.

10. When your grass-allergic child will be playing on grass, aside from taking medications, he/she should wear cool but long pants when possible to avoid contact.

In better news, high grass-pollinating season ends with the arrival of August.

Spring and early summer present a constant dilemma for people allergic to grass. It’s a choice between dodging pollen behind tightly sealed windows, or engaging in a battle with the blades, hoping antihistamines, nasal sprays and eye drops will keep the worst of the symptoms at bay.

A lot of us are making this daily choice between nose-streaming suffering and indoor boredom. It’s estimated that about 26 percent of North Americans are sensitized to either Timothy or rye grasses, and 18 percent to Bermuda grass, often used on golf courses.

Allergy shots have long been an option for those who can’t bear all the congestion and mucus any longer, but they require a serious commitment to needles and doctor’s visits, week after week, allergy season after allergy season, for several years.

For the moment, those shots are the only game in town. But that may be about to change. Needles may soon give way to small tablets, placed under the tongue and allowed to dissolve for about a minute. And, impatient people, rejoice: the tablets – called sublingual immunotherapy or SLIT – may significantly improve hay fever symptoms within a month. The best news? Two SLIT pills have recently completed the final phase of testing in the U.S. and their makers getting ready to apply for regulatory approval.

Dr. Linda Cox, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida allergist who organized a large study for one of the drugs, has spent years looking at the limitations and safety of immunotherapy for environmental allergens like grasses. She points to European research that followed patients who took grass SLIT tablets to note how life-changing the drug can be. Years after patients stopped taking the tablets, the protective effects still lingered. “No [other] medication does that,” Cox says. “You can’t take a drug for a season and expect the next season it will have [still] fixed your problem.”

With pollen seasons becoming longer in many areas, such therapies could be all the more important, as allergy sufferers are faced with the threat of even longer stretches of congested misery.

The Contenders

One of the SLIT drugs is called Oralair in Europe, and is produced by the French company Stallergenes. It contains extracts from five northern grasses, including orchard grass, Kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass, sweet vernalgrass and Timothy grass, most of which are found in nearly every North American state and province. Like other immunotherapies, the drug works by repeatedly exposing the body to tiny amounts of allergen over several months, which helps to desensitize the allergy sufferer just in time for a spring blast of pollen.

In a U.S. study of Oralair, 473 grass-allergic adults in several northern and central states got either the drug or a placebo for six months. Researchers found a 28 percent improvement in allergy symptoms and medication use compared to the group getting the sugar pills. Oralair was particularly good at relieving itchy and watery eyes, and patients also said they slept better.

The other tablet that could soon be on North Americans’ relief radar is known as Grazax in Europe (where SLIT tablets have been on the market since 2006). Danish company ALK makes the tablet, but drug-manufacturer Merck is spearheading the American research and push for approval. Unlike Oralair, Grazax focuses its immunological attack on just one pollen: Timothy grass, which is found everywhere in North America except Nunavut and Puerto Rico.

In one U.S. study of Grazax, adults showed about a 20 percent improvement in symptoms. In another, children’s allergy symptoms improved by 26 percent. “If somebody takes Grazax, and uses nasal steroids and antihistamines on top of it, then this would be by far the most effective

Grass allergy is one of the most common pollen allergies, up there with the birch tree and ragweed. In the central and northern United States and Canada, grass generally pollinates in May, June and July.

If the Kleenex box is your constant companion during these months, chances are, you find trouble in the turf.

SYMPTOMS

As with all pollen allergies, those who react to grass suffer from allergic rhinitis, commonly know as hay fever. Typically you’ll sneeze, feel congestion and have itchy eyes and noses. The symptoms may not be as severe as they are for tree pollen allergy or ragweed allergy, because the pollen counts often aren’t as high. On the down side, grasses pollinate for a longer period of time, so you’re bound to have many uncomfortable days.

Those contending with a grass allergy also tend to have more symptoms of conjunctivitis – that is, itchy, watery eyes – than those with tree or ragweed allergy, according to Dr. Harold Kim, an allergist based in Kitchener, Ontario and an assistant professor in the department of clinical immunology and allergy at McMaster University.

“It’s also more likely that they get swelling of the tissues around the eyes,” he says.

Although symptoms are usually limited to the nose and eyes, some who are severely allergic to grass and will get hives upon contact with its pollen. In the most dangerous cases, they can experience a reaction that is close to anaphylaxis.

“I’ve seen it a couple of times,” says Dr. Donald Stark, a Vancouver allergist. “They fall and they try to get the soccer ball, or in baseball, they’re sliding through the grass. That can cause contact hives, and I’ve actually seen almost anaphylactic reactions because they get enough antigen absorbed through the scraped skin.”

If you’ve had such a reaction, Stark recommends asking your allergist to prescribe an epinephrine auto-injector.

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