the best allergy medicine with minimum sideeffects......

i have severe nasal and perfume allergy......i  tried quite a few but they make my vision blurred and pain in the back of my head......the doc has prescribed me singulair but ive read about the sideeffects,i am already on antidepressants.......is zyrtec okay

[Bhupinder Kaur, MD]

Hello,

Side effects of singulair are many varying from non serious ones like nausea,abdominal pain,headache,heart burns and GI discomfort to serious ones like anaphylaxis,liver damage and depression and hallucinations.You can take zytec(cetrizine) for your allergies but it is also not without side effects.They may vary from allergic reactions to raised heart beat,seizures and liver damage.

Unfortunately, there is no way to know beforehand if you will have side effects from a medicine that you have never tried. Therefore, pls make sure to let your doctor know if you develop any side effects or any changes while taking the drug.

Hope it helps.Take care and pls do keep me posted on how you are doing.

[crystalfresh]

Beledryl makes some people fall a sleep with in 15-30 minutes of drowsyness but it works great for a few hours until it wears off.

NasalCrom nasal spray (over the counter) does a little for specific nasal allergies but wears off after a few hours too. NasalCrom doesn't really have side effects that I know of, maybe a little dry nose. Really gentle stuff. There are no steroids in NasalCrom.

Claritin and Clarinex (they work very differently) might help. Claritin makes me light headed for 30 minutes, raises blood pressure a little but wears off after a few hours. Clarinex works better for me, lasts 14 hours on me. Both are pretty weak for antihistamines.

Other than this there is a couple more that use the same med as Claritin, so same effect pretty much. The other antihistamines usually cause drowsyness.

Don't know of too many nasal sprays with out steroids. You could ask yoru doc for free samples of Clarinex since it seems to be the stronger of the bunch for low side effects. But also might not do as much as you want. Some help might be better then no med...?

[arsenalfan88]

i think ill give zyrtec a try...thanks