I searched through the forum and didn’t find a dedicated thread for allergy sufferers. Figure this thread could also cover those with food allergies / intolerances as well. I live in Austin which has a reputation for being one of the worst places to be for people with allergies.
I’ve tried just about every over the counter allergy medicine there is. It all works for a little while but I start feeling off and kind of nauseous when I stay on those meds for an extended period. So I use them as little as possible.
The one med I go back to for really bad days is pseudoephedrine. It’s the one over the counter med where have I show my ID to the pharmacist. For my daily use though I’ve went to using non medicated sprays. Which are okay. I recently found one that uses capsaicin in the spray which stings but has worked the best for me out of all the rest. I’m trying a new one that uses Xylitol and didn’t know much about it. I did find a study on which seems promising. But will see how it works in the long run.
I’ve never been diagnosed with allergies other than an allergy to poison ivy, which most people have.
They say that people can develop allergies at any time. It’s possible that over the past few years I have developed a mild allergy to something or maybe not. I have been suffering from very mild and intermittent allergy symptoms.
I asked my doctor if it’s safe to take OTC allergy meds if I don’t actually have an allergy, and they said I should just go for it. When I felt some symptoms that were bad enough that I actually noticed them and was bothered by them I tried out the cheapest generic cetirizine(Zyrtec).
I only have anecdotal evidence, but so far I think I’m getting a positive result. There has never been a time when I have felt bad/weird and thought back and remembered taking the allergy medicine recently. I guess that means no noticeable negative immediate side effects. Also, every time I have taken it I have never found myself saying “Blarg, why am I still having these symptoms? I just took the allergy pill!” I just go about my day and completely forget that the allergies were a thing when the symptoms subside. It’s always at least 24 hours, if not more, before symptoms return. I also take it rarely enough that I always remember when I’ve taken one, so I don’t think my anecdotal data has any false positives or negatives.
If the symptoms ever get worse and the flame of the earth subsides a bit I may go see an allergy specialist.
Good timing on this thread. I spent two weeks basically immersed in cat dander, an allergen for me, cause I had to get out of my house for psych reasons and it was where I could go. Managed them shockingly well with antihistamines (over the counter stuff, I hate pseudoephedrine cause I hate stimulant effects excluding very specific moments) plus aggressive showers and time outside got me a full two weeks of survival. Returning home I’m still fighting the joint pain, and the dust I get into cleaning isn’t making it easier. Activates a fight or flight thing tho which is helpful for me in this moment specifically.
My allergies have been way worse than usual since a few months into the Quarantine. And they’ve been cropping up at times I normally have zero allergy problems. Just runny nose and sneezing on the regular for inexplicable reasons.
I mostly have trouble with pollen during the month of May. I would mostly take a Zyrtec and that would keep it under control. But recently I’ve actually discovered that if I eat a teaspoon of locally made honey every day, starting a few weeks before my symptoms usually do, my symptoms become so mild that I don’t need to take any pills.
I’m told the logic is that by consuming honey made from the same plants that create the pollen I’m allergic to, it trains my system not to treat it as a threat. I don’t know how scientific it is, but it seems to work - and I’d rather take honey instead of medication every day.
Oh well, then either it’s a placebo or my allergies coincidentally reduced themselves significantly in the same exact year that I started trying honey. The itching used to be bad enough that I wanted to claw my eyes out, and now I haven’t taken pills in the past few years and all I get is maybe the occasional sneeze.
Cool. Glad you’re feeling better. I didn’t want to imply it doesn’t work, just that there is no evidence of it working in controlled studies, nor does the mechanism usually posited hold up under scrutiny.
That’s the annoying thing about medical claims like this. All kinds of things make different people feel better, but if they can’t be explained or quantified, any advice comes down to “whatever makes you comfortable” with an extra dose of “don’t get ripped off by scams please”.
I’m eating a lot of apples because it’s apple season. The last few times I ate one, my face felt tingly/flush while eating. Like, in the cheek area. This is 100% consistent. Every single time I eat an apple, and different varieties of apple, I get the exact same feeling. I’ve been eating apples my whole life, and this is new this year.
However, I’m not getting the other symptoms people talk about like itching tongue, lips, throat, etc. Literally the only symptom is that while I’m eating the apple my face feels like I’m blushing because I’m embarrassed about something.
Scott, that is exactly how my apple thing started. It slowly got worse over the years until it got to the point that my throat swelled up any time I ate an apple.
In general, I have been seeing chatter all over the Internet of people who never had allergies developing them, or people who had allergies having them worse, in the last three months. My own allergies are definitely worse.
I wonder, purely speculatively, if the lack of going outside/interacting/getting sick is putting the human body in a state where the immune system becomes oversensitive and allergies arise.
Well now I just have an image in my head of Scott having a picnic in the park to himself, just laying things out one by one with deliberate precision, Apple, small knife, Epi-pen.
I think something similar might be the case for me.
I was really happy that I went almost the entire year without any bugs or illnesses, and chalked it up to being socially distanced.
Then this month I was hit hard for days at a time, and in a way it felt like all the illnesses (mostly tonsillitis related) that hit during the year all came in a two week span.
I ate another apple. My cheeks under my eyes got tingly and a little sweaty, but no other symptoms. I really washed the fuck out of that apple, too. If it’s really from pollen on the apple, then it can’t be easily washed off.
If it’s allergies to those similar proteins themselves, and not to just the birch pollen specifically, no amount of washing will help.
My allergist had suggested that it was birch pollen on apples. (I am very allergic to birch pollen). But the article you linked to stated that apples have similar proteins to birch pollen. So you might just be effed.
I eat cooked apples, but avoid raw ones and skins.
The more apples you eat, the more allergic you could become.
