Is this allergy or something else?

For as long as I have lived at my home, around fourteen years or so, I have suffered terribly in the summer months with hayfever. This goes beyond sneezes and itchy eyes.

But, I also have other reactions in summer months. I can be OK near trees if they’re away from a road. If there’s a road at the side of them I lose energy fast, eyes blur, cognition reduces greatly and I can’t string a sentence together...oh and severe nausea. This has been happening since before I got diagnosed with ME.

Also, if I’m in a large store that has little ventilation I’ll get similar symptoms along with being spaced out and sweating, jittery and faint..like hypoglycaemia but that’s been ruled out.

I’d like to be tested for allergens, not sure if it’s the right way to go.

My mum moved to the same location around four years ago. She’s normally fit and well. Since being here she’s identical to me with these issues. My daughter, if she visits, gets the same thing happen. My husband and step dad are unaffected.

I feel so sorry for mum, she has never been so ill so consistently and it’s getting her down. She has to have regular weeks away in order to feel better, she feels much better when she’s away, then on return she’s soon very unwell.

 

THIS HAPPENS TO YOU TOO?

Comes with dyspnea in my case. After about 5-min in a Lowes for example, I'm gasping. Happens in any warehouse-type store with a high enough ceiling.

Possibilities are that we need a higher amount of oxygen than average, or that we're not great at utilizing oxygen. I also have issues before storms, and when the weather gets hot -- all circumstances where air quality is poor.

I'm guessing this is actually a separate issue from the allergy thing when near certain trees.

 

Yes, I would follow up with an allergist to rule out environmental allergies. Skin prick tests can determine IgE allergies to specific trees like acacia, sycamore, privet, pine, olive, cedar, birch and cypress. It doesn’t sound like you have an IgE allergy from your symptoms, but at least with testing you will know for sure. Just be aware if you go this route that histamine solution is used as control, and PwME can react adversely to that.

 

Just thought it worth saying in case people aren’t aware. skin prick tests are not definitive and fraught with interpretation issues due to false positives. So I wouldn’t rely on the results of these on their own

The following is worth a read just to put them into context:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/...sts-they-could-do-more-harm-than-good/252344/

 

Yes, it does.

I get dyspnea, yep. I do wonder if it’s oxygen related - the body (brain especially) not getting enough. It’s interesting at the very least.

Maybe the reactions I get when at the roadside near trees is somehow oxygen related too?

Wouldn’t it be good if we were actually sent for proper investigations, rather than being left to it.

 

Thanks, I appreciate that.

 

Thanks for that. Good to know. I have to be careful with certain treatments as I’m on heart medication.

When I’ve had Fexofenadine (which I can take with my medication) it didn’t do anything to relieve these symptoms, in fact it caused worse symptoms (side effects).

I don’t tend to do well with antihistamines. Not sure how I’d be with a histamine solution - is that the kind that slowly introduces allergens in the hope that your body stops reacting to them?

 

Well, I have had my oxygen saturation measured. It is actually dropping at these points. Lowest I've ever seen it go is 78% saturation; but that was during a shock-type reaction, so perhaps a drop of that magnitude requires other issues (yes, it WOULD be lovely if actual investigation occurred, so I could be certain).

Generally speaking I experience dyspnea if my oxygen saturation drops below 96%. It gets really, really bad at 92 or 93%. Frankly, a healthy person wouldn't be having issues at this point.

I noted my issues dropped significantly after I stopped my probiotic, which contained things to which I was reactive. I still experience this, but to a lesser degree. So it's safe to say allergy makes it worse, even if it's NOT safe to say that it is 'caused by allergy'.

Anyway, that's what makes me think it's a utilization issue, or a high requirement issue. My blood oxygen is dropping, but it's not low enough to cause distress in a healthy human.

 

You sound like my daughter, she also reacted adversely to antihistamines, including ones which were meant to be safe. I think it was a problem with her histamine receptors. I don’t know whether it is possible to measure histamine receptor antibodies but I suspect this was something that could have been diagnostic for her at her worst.

She is much better now and what worked for her was identifying all IgE allergies and eliminating them and reducing all food sources of histamine until her nerves calmed down. It took years.

The histamine solution is a weak solution of the exact substance that is the result of an allergic reaction in your body. A pin prick of it is applied to your skin during allergen tests to provide context to the other skin prick test results. Unfortunately for my daughter this triggers the dysautonomic symptoms which you might call a crash. But it has been worth it to know what the IgE triggers are to be able to get rid of them to see significant healing.

The type of therapy where they introduce small levels of allergens in the hope your body stops reacting is called immunotherapy and this can be done after an IgE allergy has been identified (only for some allergies I believe). It’s not a small thing, being both expensive and lengthy.

 

This kind of reminds me that, when I was really young, like between 3 and 6, I would get a pretty bad headache, and generally feel terrible, if I accompanied my mother to a garden nursery to buy plants, etc...

I would complain, but my mother seemed to be incredulous that anything about the nursery could be wrong, since it wasn't affecting her. As I got older, the effect diminished.

It was only much later that I realized why I had this reaction. When I was under 6 years old, I was, naturally... short. I was breathing the air down near where the dirt, fertilizer and water in the planters was located. It was no doubt an entirely different atmosphere down there, and I was being poisoned by it. Garden shops don't make me ill anymore, but I still cringe when I get a whiff of that moist, thick, fertilizer smell.

 

@dangermouse, I have the same reactions, too.

I rarely leave the house and so I don't have the issue with large stores and supermarkets these days. However, at home I am surrounded by woods and oilseed rape fields, and for some reason my symptoms are very much worse this year (usually we have wheat or barley closest to the house, and so I am assuming its the change to OSR, or the sprays used on this particular crop, that's to blame?).

Since I don't do well with meds in general, I have just bought this little gadget from Amazon (where else ?), a Kinetik allergy reliever:



Only been a couple of days so too soon to tell if it's helping. Never mind, at least it should come in handy around Christmas time because it makes your nose light up like Rudolph!

 

When I very first became unwell I was still working as a nurse at a hospital, I had my oxygen saturation checked after I'd walked around and experienced the shortness of breath, my saturation levels were within normal range, around 95%ish (bearing in mind I'd stopped walking by this point and my breathing had returned to almost normal, so could have done with the test being done as I was walking really).

 

That's great that she is much better now. Ah, so it may be worth getting allergy tested? That's something to think about. From there (depending on what the results were) could look at the triggers.

Thanks.

 

I can experience that in some garden centres, but not all. It seems to be the indoor lily type plants that'll cause the reactions.

 

I have rapeseed fields not too far away and fields and wooded areas nearby, the rapeseed is pretty bad. We also have a large composting facility around half a mile across the field from us.

I rarely get to be in a supermarket now, these last few years I've been largely housebound, after pneumonia that has taken ages to recover from and worsened my health somewhat.

I'll have a look at that gadget, it'd be interesting to know if it helps.

 

My IgE is perpetually high, but I don't seem to have IgE-based allergies to anything they commonly test for. Lots of IgG based sensitivities, though, some of them extreme in comparison to what others experience. For example, if I get dairy, I begin to have problems breathing and my throat swells up... but it's definitely not Ig-E based, as it often takes several hours after ingestion to get really bad.