Is Your Child Having Simple Colds or Allergies?
Most children normally get 6 to 10 colds per year, but when your child begins to show symptoms of a cold, the wisest thing you can do is to never rule out allergies.
Dr. Teresa Copeland, an allergist, explains “Untreated allergies can sometimes turn into a sinus infection or middle ear fluid in young children and lead to other complications and it is not a trivial thing and makes a lot of people miserable.”
“With year end allergies or seasonal allergies that can also impact on a child in terms of sinus infections, days lost from school, ear infections, needing to tubes in the ears, tonsils out, so you want to catch that before it got so bad that the child needed surgical intervention,” adds Dr. Copeland.
Children as young as three years old can already undergo an allergy test to determine whether a child is allergic to dust mites, grasses, molds and other irritants that could trigger allergic reactions, such as frequent sneezing or rashes.
For children with allergies, it’s important to keep an eye out for asthma.
“Somewhere between 70 to 80 percent of patients with asthma have an allergic component if they are younger group of asthmatics and the flip side to that is, 25 to 30 percent of patients who start out with with allergic rhinitis may progress to asthma during their life,” said Dr. Copeland.
Tags: allergies and colds, allergies in children, child allergy
