I drink infrequently, less than once a week and only wine. Three times now I have had a strange reaction to wine. The reaction is a growing feeling of puffiness or swolleness all over. My wedding ring becomes tight. It’s not a good feeling.
The first time was red wine in November and was accompanied with nausea and a few small hives on one wrist. The second time was red wine at Christmas and was accompanied by mild itchiness.
After those two times I swore off red wine and have only had white wine a few times without reaction since then.
I had it again after drinking one glass of white wine tonight.
I’ve decided to ask a doctor about it before swearing off all wine forever. I had thought to see my regular GP but my husband thinks I should just skip straight to an allergist on the theory that I’ll end up there anyway.
It seems like an allergy, but I think the GP is a better choice because what if it’s some weird non-allergy thing that I’ve never heard of?
Another weird thing is that I drank this same wine last night when I opened the bottle with no reaction. Is there anything that happens to wine as it sits that creates something that I might be having a reaction to? Wanting to believe I might still be able to drink wine as long as it’s “fresh”.
If it is an allergy, it’s very common for them to me more or less pronounced depending on the time of the year and what you were doing before hand. For example, if you have an allergy to, say, apples that so mild you never knew you had it, you might end up with a slightly itchy throat if you ate an apple after going for a long run.
As for the time of the year, if your body is already reacting to certain pollens in the air, you might be exasperating the situation by adding the wine. The wine on it’s own, during other times of the year aren’t a problem.
Here’s the wiki page for Oral Allergy Syndrome. I’m not saying that’s what you have (though it was an eye opener for me and I’m now being treated for it), but it touches on the exercise and seasonal aspects of allergies that the main allergy page doesn’t mention at all.
I’m just wondering about this because you mentioned that you reacted to the red wine during spring but not summer. There’s two different pollens in the air during those times.
OTOH, it might just be a fluke. You could see an Allergist and it’s not a terrible idea. You could also just keep some Zyrtec on hand and take that before you drink the offending wine to keep the symptoms at bay.
Could be a sulfite allergy. Sulfites are often found in wine, naturally occurring and added as a preservative. It’s a not uncommon allergy. I think Sulfites can dissipate if the bottle is left to breathe.
Breathe? Hell, they’re still there if you allow the wine to evaporate. Second time I’ve linked this column in two days:
Basically, if your reaction was that strong, give up on wine. You never know how much sulfite it contains. Ditto for dried apricots and golden raisins and other foods that are treated with sulfur dioxide. Even the ones from “health food” stores.
But not usually apricots (untreated they look like brown, mummified anuses) or golden raisins, since the sulfur dioxide treatment is what blanches them.
ETA: You just have to be careful and read the labels.
Since you already seem to know what it is that you are allergic to, I doubt that a doctor or allergist is going to be able to do much for you except to advise you to keep away from red wine, and perhaps prescribe an antihistamine that you could probably just as well get OTC. An allergist is for when you don’t know what is causing the symptoms.
Untreated apricots are pretty readily available, too. I see them all the time in health food stores and even the regular stores, and yes they’re brown and less appetizing looking. Even Trader Joe’s has them. I’ve never bought them, but I hear they taste the same. Reading labels is always advisable if trying to avoid something.
Do you have other allergies? I have a really bad fish allergy and occasionally have a bit of a reaction to wines; apparently a small amount of some sort of fish bladder extract is used as a preservative sometimes. But I think that’s mainly just in white wines.
huh, fish bladder extract? No fish allergies as far as I know, no allergies at all, but maybe it points to an ingredient in the wine and not just You Are Now Allergic to Wine.
Well, you can make your own, but that’s a lot of effort for one glass of wine a week. Might want to try a beer instead, see if it’s a reaction to alcohol instead of sulfites.
This is the case with my wife - she has life-threatening allergic reactions to sulphites and sulphur dioxide. It means almost all wine is out of bounds.
Dried fruits are OK if left in a bowl covered with cloth so they can air out.
Anything that says ‘packaged in a protective atmosphere’ may well mean that sulphur dioxide has been used/included inside the packaging - frustratingly, SO2 is used in this way as a preservative for some medicines, including many of the antihistamines that my wife could take to reduce the impact of an attack :smack:
It is often argued that suplhites have always been in wine as a natural byproduct of fermentation - and this is technically true, but it’s only fairly recently that they have been universally added in quantity as a preservative.
For people who are not allergic/sensitive, this is a bonus, because it genuinely can improve the quality of the wine (the grape must is ‘shocked’ by adding sulphites, to kill off bacteria and wild yeasts that might spoil it - then a controlled yeast culture is added).
My wife has a sulfa allergy. She has to get special flu shots because the regular one has some sulfur derivative as a preservative.
She can drink wine, but she breaks out in blotchy red hives. Fortunately, they don’t itch, but they are rather shocking to see just appear on her arms, neck and face. She mainly drinks vodka cocktails now.
I thought it was a mercury-derived preservative in flu shots - called thimerosol (not sure of the spelling). I’m severely allergic to thimerosol, which is why I need to get the non-preserved flu shots. I’m also allergic to sulfa drugs, but I’ve never heard of a sulfa/sulfur component to the flu shot. Thank goodness the non-preserved flu shot is available now!
There are remnants of sulfa antibiotics in flu vaccines, to keep it bacteria-free during manufacturing. I’m not sure if sulfa antibiotics allergies and sulfite sensitivity cross react, though.
Sulfa refers to a class of organic molecules, including several medically useful drugs, that bear little relation to the inorganic sulfates and sulfites used as preservatives in wine. They have little chemically in common apart from the similar sounding name. (Well, and the fact that they all contain the element sulfur. Nobody is allergic to all compounds containing sulfur, however. If you were, you would be dead, because every cell in your body contains sulfur compounds as necessary components of its biochemistry.) Yes, some people have problems with sulfa drugs; this has nothing to do with the sulfates and sulfites that might be in wine.
Sulfates are naturally common in your body too. No-one is going to be sensitive to sulfates as such. Sulfites may be a different matter. They are not terribly good for anyone, but may affect some people worse than others. (Though even here we are talking about sensitivity rather than true allergy.)
However, there are a lot of other things in wines, including things that teh OP might actually be allergic to.