Up until now my wife has had very typical allergic reactions like most people.
Seasonal allergies like pollen and dusting the house will make her sneeze so nothing major there. She knows to avoid cats cause her eyes and throat start to itch.
But a couple of time this year she has had a major allergic reaction to something at a couple of restaurants. Her throat itches, instant congestion, swelling eyes.
She suspected but wasn’t sure it was hazelnut.
So she goes to an allergist to find out what the main cause for concern is.
Bingo- Hazelnuts bring a strong reation.
Good to know and she can avoid them.
But wait, there’s more.
Allergic to all green plants. Doc recommends to avoid them. :dubious:
Allergic to all animals. She has had 2 Boston Terriers (one for 9 years, one for 6) which have never been a problem for her. Doc recommends to get rid of both dogs as soon as possible.:dubious:
Allergic to dust. Doc recommends to get rid of all carpet in the house and put in hardwood floors or laminate.:dubious:
Allergic to ALL nuts. She eats peanut butter at least once a week and eats almonds, pistachios, and cashews without a problem. Doc recommends to never eat nuts again.:dubious:
So is this guy serious? How much of this can be taken with a grain of salt?
Sounds like he’s trying to get her to not have to suffer through allergies, but is going a bit overboard. When I was in middle school, I had an allergic reaction every few months* so I went to a dermatologist. He gave me the skin-prick test, and gave me back a report saying what I was allergic to. IIRC, there was a scale from 1-5, where 1 meant minimal reaction and 5 meant there was a possibility you could die from it. It’s possible your wife is, say, a 4 for Hazlenut, and maybe a 2 for pet dander, etc. Did you get a report of the results. FWIW, I was told I’m allergic to cats and dogs, too, but never noticed any problems. Unfortunately, I’m about a 4 for juniper. I still love me some gin, though.
*My eyes used to swell up so big they would shut. I got my high school nickname, “Penny”, because one of the seniors on the Varsity baseball squad said, “Hey, look! His eyes look like pennies!” (the coin). The nickname stuck, and that’s what I was called all through high school.
The thing is, even when testing shows a ‘mild’ sensitivity, there are plenty of documented cases where that sensitivity suddenly caused a severe reaction resulting in death.
So it’s a crapshoot, the odds will eventually catch up with a person, if they live long enough. The safest course is to minimize exposures to all things demonstrated to cause any kind of reaction, because you never know what’ll happen with the next exposure.
Each person can decide if they want to live their life that way. But at least they’ll have the facts.
There is a lot of other stuff that can help with the dust mite allergy besides getting rid of the carpets, such as mattress and pillow encasings. There are also sprays and fabric treatments that inactivate the dust mite allergen in carpet and upholstery. Hopefully the allergist also discussed these steps. My dust mite allergy was a 5, and these changes made a big difference for me, and we still have the carpets. I would love to replace with something else, but the time hasn’t yet come for us to undertake that.
Sometimes, mild exposure to an allergen can help you cope with that allergen. WRT dogs especially, I’m horribly allergic to dogs (and all furry or feathery animals), but I owned a couple as a kid and adapted to those specific dogs. Other dogs still made me itchy and wheezy and liable to bad asthma attacks. Now I’m older and my asthma isn’t as bad, but I still get ill if I stroke a dog or cat. All the same, hopefully I’ll have another dog someday, and I will adapt to them after a while. However, I would still get very short-haired dogs, like your Boston Terriers (or I’d get a dog like a poodle - the hypoallergenic dog :D). If she can cope with her dogs OK, there’s no need to get rid of them. The trauma of losing them would, I imagine, be worse than any potential future itching.
Otherwise, one allergy can compromise your system and lead to another, which might be why he’s suggesting that she avoid other nuts (though peanuts are a bit different, since they’re not really nuts). If she really is allergic to hazelnuts, then minimising other nuts in her diet would probably help - the ‘mild exposure’ thing is a bit different when it comes to foodstuffs.
Minimising nuts in her diet wouldn’t be a big deal, but I imagine that getting rid of the dogs would be.
However: if the person is an ‘allergist’ I’d take what they said with a pinch of salt, anyway - depending on whether you’re allergic to salt. You say ‘doc,’ but is he a proper doctor? How did he diagnose her allergies? There is a bit of a market in telling loads of people they’re allergic to pretty much everything.
About thirty years ago I was given penicillin for a throat infection and broke out in hives. My doctor at the time switched me to another antibiotic and said that I probably should be tested for allergy to penicillin, because it was possible that my reaction was not a true allergy, but a reaction due to something else (after all these years I can’t recall exactly what he said, although I seem to remember “mono” being mentioned). I never did get tested, but now all my medical records show that I’m allergic to penicillin. I mentioned this to him a few years later, and his response was something like, “well, there are so many alternative antibiotics available now that there’s no reason not to just assume you’re allergic to penicillin.”
I assume she had what they call a “prick test” [insert joke here] where they measure a person’s reaction on a scale of 1-5 to a bunch of things by pricking the skin with a small sample. Most of use will come up with a 1 or even a 2 on a number of items we don’t normally even notice. While she may have an allergic reaction to those things that doesn’t mean they she is “allergic” in the sense that we normally think of these thing. Now a 4 or a 5 - that is noticeable.
I had the test done a few years ago because I suspected I was allergic to ragweed. First thing the doctor(?) did was write me a script for an Epi-pen “just in case”, with instructions to carry it with me always. After they did the test I scored a 1 on wheat, a number of nuts, fish, shellfish and a few other food items. They told me to stop eating all of those…?? Not going to happen. Oh, and I scored a 4 on ragweed which you can’t avoid.
So I would vote that they are way, way overly cautious. It costs the doc nothing to tell a person to never eat this or that again.
I am no allergist, but I understand that the nut allergies are biggies (as compared to a little mild hay fever). If I tested as allergic to nuts, yeah, I would avoid them. I don’t want my throat swelling shut. I am actually allergic to trees and grasses, and a snootfull of Flonase once a day in tree pollen season does the trick for that for me.
For the record, we have taken all the carpets out of the upstairs of our house now, and it really does feel a lot cleaner to me. I give it a swiffer once in a while, and that seems to be enough to keep the cat hair and dust down to a dull roar. I’m not sure I would do that for a mild allergy, but I like it now that the carpets are gone.
You say ‘doc,’ but is he a proper doctor? How did he diagnose her allergies? There is a bit of a market in telling loads of people they’re allergic to pretty much everything.