Few people realize that in autumn and winter, overheated and rarely ventilated flats are a trap full of allergens. In the "radiator" season, dust mites are particularly intensely developed - sensitizing microscopic creatures - arachnids.
Allergy in the heating season
Mites live and thrive in mattresses of beds, sofa coverings, in carpets and in ordinary dust. Doctors have noticed dozens of years ago that the symptoms of allergy and asthma in their patients are usually accompanied by the presence of these imperceptible to the naked eye of parasites.
Mites are tiny creatures - half a millimeter arachnids
The eels are best tasted by the peeled skin of man, and simple domestic dust is the habitat.
They can multiply in our apartments extremely quickly, because the female, who lives about 3 months, consists of 300 eggs, and her offspring begins to reproduce after a month - giving rise to the geometric pace of population development.
House mites have unlimited food resources
A man's epidermis exfoliated in one day can feed many thousands of mites for a few months. The home temperature is best at 20-30 C and the humidity is high, and the ubiquitous domestic dust is a sufficient development environment.
Allergy to house mites intensifies in the "radiator" season.
Allergy to house mites grows clearly in autumn and winter, as the microscopic arachnid then has the best development conditions in overheated and seldom-ventilated apartments. And also because we are more likely to be at home then and are more exposed to allergens.
They mainly sensitize mite excreta
It is worth knowing that it is not the arachnid itself that is an allergen, but mainly its droppings.
Because the mite turns out to be a record holder of organic matter processing - within 3-4 months of its life it produces a mass of faeces two hundred times larger than the mass of its body.
Our domestic dust is very often a concentrate of particles of mite feces
And what's the worst - molluscs, surrounded by mucus, mite droplets are ubiquitous - they can stick with the dust to many of the objects allergic to. Full allergens can be all soft furniture, carpets, mattresses and straw mattresses filled with plant material, bedding, curtains.
The allergic bed is the most endangered
In bed in 1 gram of dust, the doctors found the most dust mites, more than 3,000 specimens.
Determination of allergy to house dust does not have to be tantamount to allergy to mite excrement.
In abundance appearing from "nothing" dust - because it appears even when the windows are closed and during rainfall - there are also other allergens, such as: hair and pet hair, clothing particles, furniture liners, insecticide dusts, cleaning products, remains of cosmetics, dusts of building materials and metals.
House dust initiates allergies?
The daily struggle of our body with a cloud of allergens and toxins contained in house dust
it weakens the immune system and can cause the first symptoms of allergy, or aggravate the symptoms of all-year allergy, i.e. symptoms of hay fever, urticaria or asthma.
How to protect yourself against house dust allergens?
The basic methods of treatment of allergic diseases are: avoidance of contact with the allergen, desensitization (immunotherapy), pharmacological treatment and preventive actions. Unfortunately, it is impossible to protect yourself against allergenic domestic dust.
In such situations severe allergy symptoms - hay fever, urticaria, etc. relieve or completely eliminate the administration of antihistamines, which are treated as first-line drugs.
The first line medicines are antihistamines.
They usually work quickly, and effectively alleviate unpleasant allergic symptoms. Their mechanism consists, among others on blocking the so-called histamine receptors (hence their name) in various parts of the body. Antihistamines neutralize and alleviate most of the local allergic symptoms caused by contact with mite feces and other house dust allergens.
ed. Edward Ozga Michalski, MA
Consultation by prof. dr hab. med. Andrzej Danysz
