Loratadine

What is Loratadine?

Loratadine is an antihistamine used to treat allergies, including hay fever and hives.

Hay fever is an allergic reaction to pollen and dust mites, and it’s commonly a seasonal condition, but it can also last all year round.

Hives results in the appearance of raised, red patches on your body. It’s triggered by high levels of histamine being released in your skin. Medicines, stings or insect bites can cause this to happen.

How does Loratadine work?

When your body feels like it’s under attack, it releases an endogenous chemical messenger named histamine.^[1] This causes swelling and dilation of vessels, resulting in symptoms.

When you have allergies, your body treats inoffensive particles as offensive, releasing histamine unnecessarily. For example, with hayfever, your body thinks that pollen and dust mites are a threat. This is why the symptoms of hayfever are often stronger and happen more often during certain times of the year when the pollen concentration in the air is higher.

Antihistamines stop this process from happening, therefore eliminating the symptoms of allergies, such as congestion, watery or dry eyes, itchy throat, and sneezing.

What doses of Loratadine are there?

Loratadine is only available in 10 mg doses. You only need to take one tablet a day, so a pack of thirty lasts for a whole month.

How to take Loratadine

Loratadine treatment is straightforward. All you need to do is take one tablet every day with a glass of water (preferably at the same time, since it takes about 24 hours for the medication to wear off). You can take Loratadine with or without food, as the effect will be the same and the tablet is unlikely to cause stomach upset. If you’re not used to taking tablets every day and need a little reminder, you might want to try setting an alarm on your phone or getting a pill organizer box.

To take Loratadine or any other medication correctly, you should follow the advice of the leaflet that comes with your medication.

How long does it take Loratadine to work?

Loratadine takes effect relatively quickly—you’ll be able to feel the benefits of taking it within one hour. You’ll feel the effects of Loratadine up to 24 hours after taking it, so ideally you should take your tablet at around the same time every day.

What should I do if I make a mistake when taking Loratadine?

If you forget to take a tablet, you should take it as soon as you remember. But if it’s almost time or time for the next dosage, you should skip the missed one and continue your treatment as usual. You should never take two tablets to make up for a missed dosage, because that won’t make it more effective and can potentially cause some adverse effects.

If you accidentally take more Loratadine than you’re supposed to in a 24 hour period, you might develop some side effects such as cardiac arrhythmias and a prolonged QT-interval, which is the time it takes for the heart to contract and recover. Although these effects are more likely to happen to elderly people, anyone else can experience them. If you take too much Loratadine, you should seek medical attention. This is so you can get supplemental oxygen and cardiac monitoring, just in case your body doesn’t react well to the increased dosage. ^[1]

To avoid making mistakes, there are a few easy things you can do. The first, and most popular method, is setting an alarm on your phone to ring every day at the same time. Something else you can do is purchase a pill organizer box, where you can set out your medication for a whole week, or even a whole month. You can also incorporate pill-taking time into your routine by leaving the box next to the kettle if you always have tea or coffee in the morning, or on the bedside table if you want to take it every night before bed.