HEALTHWATCH / ALLERGIES : Tissue Wars : Controlling your environment and using medications can lessen the onslaught from mold spores and pollen.

Fighting allergies is like going to war--you load up on ammunition, set up several lines of defense, hunker down and grab a stack of tissues.

Well, it’s almost like war. And these next few months may be quite a battle for allergy sufferers. Moisture from recent heavy rains has led to a mold problem that is already making Ventura County residents sniffle and sneeze. Pollen allergies lurk just down the road for hay fever and asthma sufferers.

So should you pack the bags, grab the kids and head for a healthier environment? No, just try to control your present one, local doctors say. Here, then, are some suggestions for limiting allergens and treating allergy symptoms.

Let’s start with mold. Some people have allergic reactions when mold spores get into their eyes, nose, throat or lungs. These folks need to attack mold before it attacks them. A good way to begin is by limiting moisture in the home.

Getting rid of the bathroom carpet, said Thousand Oaks allergist Donald Unger, is at the top of the list. “Water seeps in,” he said, “and the next thing you know, you’ve got mold problems.” A fan or open window in the bathroom can also cut down on moisture and mold. A dose of bleach can wipe out existing mold.

Ventura allergist James Villaveces tells many of his patients to use a dehumidifier to decrease moisture throughout the home. “It sucks the water out of the air,” he said. He also suggested using silica gel, which absorbs moisture. The gel can be put in containers and placed in humid areas of the house. “It’s a good idea, especially after these heavy rains.”

Those rains have meant leaky roofs, walls, and floors, all of which can lead to mold problems. “Oftentimes the wallboard itself has mold growth on it,” said Lewis Kanter, an east county allergist. “You might want to remove the old Sheetrock and replace it if it smells musty or moldy or has discoloration to it.”

Moisture isn’t the lone cause of mold in the home. Plants and their soil, whether outside or inside the dwelling, can also play a role. Outside plants located near windows can send mold spores inside. Pools of water that form in the bottoms of flowerpots can attract mold, as can plant soil. There are products on the market that will kill the mold but leave the plant unharmed.

As difficult as mold may be to control, grass, tree, flower and plant pollen may even be tougher, especially in the spring and early summer. Villaveces summed up the problem for people allergic to pollen: “Stay away from windy days. If you go outside, you’re probably going to have eye irritation, a runny nose and itching.”

But even those who stay indoors must be careful.

“Keep the house closed off by using the air conditioner,” Kanter said. “In California, we have our houses built rather loosely. They’re not sealed up like back East. We have a lot of air leakage and we tend to get more exterior air in our homes.”

So now that you know the enemy, get the ammunition.

Mold and pollen allergies are both treated with the same medications. For nose congestion and itchy skin, the first artillery is often an over-the-counter antihistamine (Chlortrimeton, Actifed, Sudafed, Dimetap, and others) or a prescription antihistamine (among them Seldane and Hisminal, which do not cause sleepiness). The over-the-counter versions are sedating, but the prescription medicines tend not to be.

Villaveces said a batch of new antihistamines, including one called Ceterazine, should be available this year. “They will not sedate,” he said, “and they should stop a lot of hay fever symptoms.”

If antihistamines don’t do the trick, there are also allergy shots, which the doctors agreed are safe and effective, and nose sprays, which the experts consider dangerous.

“The average nose sprays are a disaster,” Unger said. “They are extremely addicting, can cause a lot of problems and should be avoided like the plague.” He said that using too much nose spray can raise blood pressure and cause nasal problems.

Unger suggested taking a cortisone--or cortico-steroid--prescription nose spray instead of over-the-counter sprays. “Cortisone is amazingly safe and amazingly effective,” he said, “but it has to be taken on a regular basis.” The steroids decrease hyperactivity in the lungs.

Villaveces is also a proponent of cortico-steroids, which he said are effective in treating asthma as well as allergies. “Once you have the ability to be hyper-reactive, you don’t respond just to allergic things, but also to non-allergic things like smog or cold air. The lungs are on a hair-trigger. We call them twitchy lungs,” he said. “We use anti-inflammatories, like steroids, in microgram amounts and put them right on the lungs, so the inflammation stops sooner than it would otherwise.”

A drug called sodium chromolin, which is inhaled from an aerosol puffer, has similar effects, Villaveces said. “Chromolin has been around a long time, but it is not used much. I think when physicians tried it 20 years ago, they thought it should work quickly,” he said. It didn’t, so the doctors abandoned it, Villaveces said.

“It can take four weeks, four to six times a day, to work,” he said. “For children, it’s a wonderful medicine.”

For early cases of asthma, Villaveces suggested a beta agonist (such as Albuterol) that relaxes lung muscles, or Theophylline, which increases oxygenation of the diaphragm muscle. “But neither of these two,” he warned, “stop the inflammation.”