• Business & Economy
  • Politics & Government
    • Campaign Countdown
      • 2012 Reports
  • Sports
  • High School Sports
    • Football Friday Night
    • Radio Iowa Poll
  • All Topics

Radio Iowa

Iowa's Radio News Network

  • Home
  • Audio Archives
  • Contact Us
  • Reporters
  • Affiliates
  • Affiliate Support
  • PostsComments
You are here: Home / Health & Medicine / Allergy attacks more prevalent with the warm winter weather

Allergy attacks more prevalent with the warm winter weather

February 23, 2012 By Matt Kelley

While snowflakes are flying in parts of the state this afternoon, the relatively warm winter has brought some Iowans an early onslaught of allergy attacks. Dr. Miles Weinberger, a professor of pediatric allergies at the University of Iowa, says plenty of people are already being pestered by sneezing fits, the sniffles and red, puffy eyes.

“The major effect of the warmer weather is potentially increasing people’s exposure to the ground molds,” Dr. Weinberger says. “These are molds that grow in decaying vegetation and they’re not a problem when there’s hard freezes but we’ve had days now where there hasn’t been a hard freeze.”

Those molds are the major cause of seasonal allergic asthma, but he says they don’t usually start having an impact until spring. Weinberger says, “While some people may be bothered right now, it’s not nearly what we see during the peak of the outdoor mold season when the farmers are stirring up the ground molds all over the Midwest.”

Allergy sufferers should get a bit of a break with this latest snowfall, but he says the genuine allergy season isn’t far away. “The first pollens to come out are the tree pollens,” Weinberger says. “They cause a lot of nasal symptoms and eye symptoms in this part of the country. They don’t cause much asthma, but they do cause some miserable hay fever-type symptoms.”

Those tree pollens usually start to cause allergy problems in late March or early April. On the plus side, Weinberger says virtually all of these conditions are easily treatable.


Print pagePDF pageEmail page

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Google
  • Facebook

Filed Under: Health & Medicine, News, Weather

Featured Stories

Appeals Court throws out murder verdict saying jury influenced by social media

Packing 40 years of memories, Iowan heads to Barbara Bush’s funeral

Governor approves new Iowa law on ‘food shaming’ and unpaid school lunch debt

Iowa Senate honors Wally Horn for 46-year legislative career

Clive massage therapist facing sexual assault charges

TwitterFacebook

Former Iowa State coach Earle Bruce dies at 87

Golfers tout economic impact on Iowa

Iowa NASCAR driver pays tribute to hockey team

Morris headlines women’s pole vault at Drake

Brady Ellingson joins Drake

More Sports

Tweets by @RadioIowa

eNews and Updates

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

RSS O.KayHenderson.com

  • Campaign surrogates: asset or liability? September 22, 2016
  • Proposed slate of 2016 RNC delegates from #IAGOP May 20, 2016
  • AUDIO: #IAGOP chairman talks about idea of ‘brokered’ convention March 18, 2016
  • @TerryBranstad statement on Obama nominating his cousin to SupCo March 16, 2016
  • ‘Substantial growth’ in voter registrations for both parties from #IACaucus March 15, 2016

Archives

Copyright © 2018 · Learfield News & Ag, LLC