As we get closer to colder weather, we also get closer to cold and flu season, but allergy season hasn’t ended yet, either. If you find yourself with the sniffles, you may be wondering: is it allergies or is it a cold?
The Difference Between Allergies and a Cold
Allergies happen when your body overreacts to an environmental trigger, such as dust, pollen or pet dander. Immune cells in the area activate to destroy the perceived threat. Colds, on the other hand, are caused by a virus. A virus fully activates the immune system to fight off the invader. In both cases, the immune system is trying to fight something off: with allergies, it’s fighting off the irritant, and with a cold, it’s fighting off a virus.
Two key differences are how the threat behaves inside the body and how involved the immune system’s response is to the threat. The irritant causing your allergies won’t travel through your whole body like a virus does, and an irritant won’t reproduce itself in the body like a virus will. As a result, the immune system will behave slightly differently to the two invaders. For the harmless, floating irritant causing your allergies, the immune system deploys locally—usually in the nose and air passageways—and needs only to flush out the irritant to get the job done. For a virus, the body releases an army of white blood cells to destroy the virus.
How Do Symptoms Differ?
Colds and allergies have many of the same symptoms, but there are some differences to help you tell them apart.
Symptoms of Both:
- Sneezing
- Runny nose
- Stuffy nose/congestion
- Fatigue
If you have a runny nose, pay attention to the color of the mucus. Typically, if it’s watery and clear, it’s probably due to allergies, but if it’s thick and cloudy or even yellow, it’s probably due to a cold.
Symptoms of Allergies, but not a Cold:
- Itchy eyes
- Watery eyes
- Itchy nose
Symptoms of a Cold, but not Allergies:
- Cough
- Sore throat (allergies can sometimes cause a sore throat, but sore throats are much more common with a cold)
- Body aches
- Decrease in appetite
- Fever (sometimes)
Also consider timing. Allergies last as long as your triggers are present (usually in the warmer months when pollen count is high), but a cold usually lasts three to 14 days.
How To Get Relief
Knowing the difference between symptoms helps you determine how to treat the underlying cause. You can mediate both conditions by getting lots of rest and staying hydrated, as well as washing your hands frequently.
For a cold, over-the-counter (OTC) medications such as acetaminophen (Tylenol) or ibuprofen (Advil) can help with muscle aches and fever reduction, if you have a fever.
To manage allergy symptoms, OTC antihistamines (Zyrtec) or nasal sprays can help manage the immune system response and flush out the irritants causing you grief. If you’ve tried over-the-counter medications and still are plagued by allergy symptoms and fatigue, consider immunotherapy, a treatment that builds tolerance in the body to an allergen, which decreases the body’s reaction going forward. This treatment will lessen your allergies over time. Call Carolina Pines ENT today to find out more.