She says peppermint makes her sneeze. When she bites into a candy cane, or pops an Altoid, or starts chewing peppermint gum, she has an almost immediate sneezing reaction.
She says it doesn’t apply to wintergreen, or spearmint. Peppermint only.
There are no other symptoms; she doesn’t get a rash or anything. Also, after the initial sneeze, she can proceed to chomping down on the candy cane or whatever without repeated or continued effects. She says it’s like an immediate “shock to the system,” resulting in a sneeze or two, and then it’s done.
Is she crazy?
And if not, is there a generally understood cause for this? I tried googling “peppermint allergy” and I got a lot of sites about people whose skin reacts to peppermint oil, but nothing about sneezing. Any ideas?
My mother does the exact same thing, and I used to work with a girl who did it too. I think it might have something to do with the vapors from the mint going up through the sinuses and irritating them. That’s just a guess.
And here I though I was the only one. It started with altoids, I think because they’re so strong. I think that started a conditioned response to pepermint flavor so that now even regular pepermints make me sneeze sometimes.
This kind of reminds of the photic sneexe reflex. I wonder is a “crossed nerve signal” might also be responsible. Maybe only the peppermint flavors are strong enough to cause the “short”.
No offense or anything, but if you think that Altoids are strong, you have been sheltered in the world of candy. If you can find them, try Frisk, they are about 1/4 the size of altoids and about 5 times stonger.
