Want to get more out of your visits to the allergist? Or have you ever left our clinic and realized you forgot to mention something about your allergies that you wanted to discuss? Keeping an allergy symptom journal could be a big help.
Why Keep an Allergy Symptom Journal
Allergies can change over time—both over the course of a single allergy season and over the course of your life. A symptom journal is a valuable tool for tracking your allergies and can help you notice changes, identify patterns and note which treatments work (and which don’t). Moreover, it can help facilitate effective communication with your allergist, which can, in turn, lead to more accurate and productive allergy treatments.
Things to Track in a Symptom Journal
Your goal is to track information that is useful to you and your allergist in combating your allergic reactions. To that end, you’ll want your entries to detail anything and everything that could be related to your allergies.
A typical entry may include:
- Date, season, time
- Location
- Possible triggers
- What symptoms you experience
- The severity of symptoms
- Medications you took that day
- Medications you took in response to the reaction
- Effectiveness of the medication
- Notes about your routine that day: sleep quality, hydration, any other illnesses
- Weather: sometimes changes in humidity, barometric pressure or wind can affect allergies
If you think of something that you know you want to bring up with your allergist, you can also jot that down in this journal to keep all your allergy-related notes in one place.
How to Start a Symptom Journal
You can use any blank notebook or a phone app to start a symptom journal, or you can find online templates that might be useful.
We also recommend that, especially when you’re starting out, you make an entry in your symptom journal every day, even if you don’t have any allergy symptoms that day; that’s still a data point that we can use later.
Bringing Your Journal to the Allergist
To use your journal effectively, regularly review it to identify patterns and triggers. Also watch for symptoms that change or worsen. Then, you can bring these insights to your next appointment with your allergist.
We can use the information you provide to us to make your allergy treatment plan stronger and more responsive to your day-to-day needs. If you’re already on an immunotherapy regimen, we can also use this information to track the treatment’s effectiveness.
If you have any other questions about symptom tracking and how it helps us build a customized allergy plan, call us at Willamette ENT & Facial Plastic Surgery.
Learn More
“Have always found the staff and doctors here to be helpful. This was my first visit with Dr. Prze after Dr. Allan retired, and he was very friendly, enthusiastic, and thorough. It was obvious he had read my chart carefully before my checkup.”