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How Do Antihistamines work?

Antihistamines are the antidote to exposure to histamine. As their name implies, antihistamines are able to block the effects of histamine in your body. [ You should think of antihistamines as being the bouncer at a club ].

When histamine molecules get onto the surface of the cell, they cause inflammation and irritation.

Antihistamines displace the histamine molecules from the cell and form a protective shield around the cells so that histamine can not interact with the cell to cause an allergic reaction.

Example

Let's say that you are allergic to the perfume in a lotion, but you get some on your skin by accident. You break out in an itchy rash where the lotion touched your skin.

What is happening is that the perfume in the lotion caused the cells in your body to release histamine. The histamine gets onto the surface of your skin cells and causes an itchy rash. What do you do?

You take a dose of antihistamine such as Benadryl (diphenhydramine) or Allegra (fexofenidine). The antihistamine acts like a bouncer. It kicks the histamine off of the skin cells and prevents the histamine from reacting to cause inflammation, redness and itch.

Within minutes the rash should subside and the itching go away.

What is histamine and why is it bad?

When you get an allergic reaction, a cascade of events takes place in your body that results in the release of a substance know as " histamine" . You can think of histamine as being the " bad guy" in an allergic reaction.

Histamine causes inflammation. Histamine is very irritating to the body. If you injected a tiny bit of pure histamine into your skin, the result is that you would likely see a welt or a rash.

When you are exposed to something that you are allergic to, the resulting release of histamine can cause in an itchy rash, a welt, itchy eyes, watery eyes, a runny nose, etc.

There is a severe, life threatening form of allergic reaction known as anaphylactic shock.

For instance, if you are highly allergic to something like peanuts or penicillin, and you are exposed to this thing that you are allergic to, your body can react severely.

Your tongue and throat may swell up, you may experience a severe rash all over your body and you may go into shock.


Bron: CoreyNahman