Allergies are often associated with annoying symptoms like sneezing, itching, and a runny nose. But did you know that allergies can also have an impact on your heart health? Let’s explore how allergies can affect your heart in easy-to-understand terms.
Inflammation and Stress on the Heart
Your body fights off the allergen by making chemicals like histamine when you have an allergy response. This defensive reaction can cause swelling all over the body, even in the heart and blood vessels. Over time, chronic inflammation can put stress on the heart and raise the risk of developing heart disease.
Increased Risk of Asthma and Respiratory Issues
Allergies, especially ones that affect the lungs, like hay fever or allergy asthma, can make it hard to breathe and make your lungs work less well. Asthmatics are more likely to have heart problems because their disease can put stress on the heart by lowering the amount of oxygen in the blood and making it work harder.
Allergic Reactions and Anaphylaxis
A sudden drop in blood pressure and breathing difficulties are symptoms of the life-threatening disease anaphylaxis. Allergic reactions can get very bad in some cases. Anaphylaxis can put a lot of stress on the heart, and if it isn’t handled right away, it can cause cardiac death or other problems with the heart.
Effects of Antihistamines on the Heart
A lot of allergy medicines, like antihistamines, work by stopping the body from using histamine. Even though some types of antihistamines, especially older ones, may have side effects that can hurt the heart, they can help with allergy symptoms. Some of these side effects are changes in blood pressure or heartbeats that aren’t normal (arrhythmias).
Stress and Anxiety
It can be hard to deal with stress when you have allergies, especially when your symptoms are at their worst. Anxiety and stress that last for a long time can hurt your heart health by raising your blood pressure and heart rate and making cardiovascular disease more likely over time.
Prevention and Management
To keep your heart healthy and lessen the effects of allergies, it’s important to stop allergy reactions and deal with symptoms properly.
- Actively avoid things that make your allergies worse.
- Take allergy medicine as your doctor tells you to.
- Using air filters or clothing that doesn’t harbor allergens can help lower your exposure to them.
- Using methods to lower stress, like yoga or meditation.
- Get medical help right away if you have a serious allergic response or anaphylaxis.
Over the course of your lifetime, you can help protect your heart and general well-being by first gaining an awareness of the possible effects that allergies may have on the health of your heart and then adopting preventative measures to properly manage your allergies. If you are unsure about the kind of allergies you have, you ought to get tested.
