I have the same sensitivity or intolerance, but it extends to powdered gloves of any material. If I’m only wearing the gloves in a room temperature situation, I can deal with the powder briefly, but working with steam tables (bain maries) or in a dishroom, the powder gives my hands little red itchy dots. Non-powdered latex and vinyl gloves don’t do this.
Allergies: Cottonwood pollen. I’ve never had this officially diagnosed, but when the cottonwood blooms and the air smells sweet with their perfume, I get about 1 day where I can smell my favorite scent in the world and then a week of itchy eyes, runny nose, and post-nasal drip. I’m also allergic or sensitive to at least one blooming plant at any given moment, spring to autumn. Even with allergy pills will sometimes have to vomit due to significant post-nasal drip- I swallow so much mucus I can’t not purge it. That made early morning classes really fun.
Intolerances: I’m on the way to being lactose intolerant. Thanks, Dad. Anything the least bit fermented or cooked is fine, but if my jeans are the least bit snug it’s best I don’t drink plain milk. I intensely dislike that stomachache.
There’s such a thing as excess dark chocolate? News to me. If you suffer from this, though, please send it to me, and I will dispose of it properly. I used to think that I prefered milk chocolate, until I ate some GOOD dark chocolate.
I get this - feels like someone is stabbing me. Annoying thing is, when I tell doctors about it, they always think I’m being too shy to say that it gives me diarrhea. One doctor wanted to give me some Erythromycin eye drops, and I was afraid of what they’d do to my eyes, if they had that effect on my stomach. Doctor kept repeating, in the sweetest mommy-to-child voice (I’m 30) that since they were going in my eyes, they wouldn’t give me diarrhea. :mad:
Zyrtec’s OTC now. You can get generic Zyrtec at Costco. I do.
How many allergy shots did it take to get rid of the dust allergy? I’m deathly afraid of needles, but my allergy to house dust is getting such that I’m considering it if it’s only a couple of shots. If it’s more like 20, though, still no way.
Probably because the dye-free stuff doesn’t look the same as the regular. There are probably a fair number of people who remember what their allergy medicine is supposed to look like better than they can remember the brand name. And then there are people like me who are wary when a medicine we’re about to take (or give someone else) is not the same shape or color that we’re used to. I worry that it being the wrong shape or color might be an indication that I grabbed the wrong bottle from the medicine cabinet, and that could be quite dangerous if uncaught.
If I pet a cat, I must be sure not to touch my face without washing hands first. If I do, I will get hives in the exact spot I touched. This does not happen on any other part of my body - I can touch my arm or leg, and there’s no reaction at all.
Similar with latex bandages - putting one on my hand or foot is fine. Putting one on my stomach, side, or back will result in a horrible bandage-shaped rash.
And there’s one type of sugarless Hall’s cough drop I cannot use at all. The package warns of a laxative effect if you ‘overconsume’ - apparently overconsumption for me means ‘just one and you’ll get a bangup case of the squirts.’ All other Hall’s varieties - including other sugarless ones - are fine.
I don’t know if it’s an allergy or what, but from time to time I get incredibly itchy on my back after I’ve slept with no shirt on; it happens more often in other people’s beds, which as you can imagine can put a bit of a crimp in my style, but it also happens once in a while in my own. What confuses me is that it doesn’t happen frequently and that it doesn’t affect all exposed skin (on one memorable occasion, it was restricted instead to a three-inch band below my left knee). But when it does, it’s absolute hell.
True allergies: lobster, oysters, shrimp shells but not the shrimp within, and aminoglycoside antibiotics (common examples: neomycin, streptomycin, gentamicin, tobramycin).
The oyster and lobster things don’t bother me, since I don’t like either, but the shrimp thing sucks. I like shrimp and I eat it all the time but I have to be careful with the shells.
The aminoglycoside allergy is annoying because 1) many good, cheap topical antibiotics are in this class and 2) the naming convention for aminoglycosides isn’t consistent. All aminoglycosides end with -mycin or -micin, but not all -mycins are aminoglycosides – for instance, erythromycin is a macrolide and vancomycin is a glycopeptide, and I’m not allergic to either.
The only food thing that bothers me is too much sugar. If I drink regular Gatorade or too much non-diet soft drink, I’ll get a stomachache and then a headache soon after. Otherwise, not much bothers me.
No allergies to speak of…nothing diagnosed, anyway. I get colds at the drop of a hat, though.
I’m slightly sensitive to perfumes, though. They give me migraines (I can pass by shops like Lush and Bath and Body Works and be okay, but going inside for longer than five minutes can make me regret it later). I’m also of the opinion that some perfumes or other chemicals adversely affect my skin, because my shampoo (herbal essences) makes my scalp itch if I only use it exclusively.
And I think I have a sensitivity to something involved in the shaving process. I can shave my underarms with shaving gel just fine, but whenever I shave my legs, they itch like crazy, even after putting on lotion and/or Gold Bond body powder. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve actually drawn blood from scratching so hard. Google searches have suggested an allergy to dust mites, which I guess would make sense. I haven’t shaved in about a week and they STILL itch.
Also, my mother’s migraine pills (caffeine, aspirin, acetaminophen) make my hands shake sometimes.
I realize I’d forgotten one sensitivity: I cannot eat much lemon pie filling or drink much undiluted lemonade- whether or not it is made with real lemons- without getting a horrible headache. Limes, oranges, grapefruit, and tangerines in any “formulation” are all fine. Lemon curd, which has more fat than lemon pie filling, is also fine most of the time.
Sorry – it took a full course, which is typically 4-6 months of weekly or twice-weekly shots (they start with a tiny dose and work up to a much larger one) followed by a maintenance dose every other week or once a month for a year or two. It’s designed to build up your tolerance, which you can’t rush.
It doesn’t work like a vaccine, sadly – vaccines get your immune system to recognize a threat, whereas allergy shots do the opposite: get your immune system to ignore something it mistakenly considers a threat.
A whole banana makes my stomach hurt. Half a banana is usually OK. A full glass of apple juice has the same effect but cider is OK.
If I eat a lot of peanuts, I feel like I have a hangover later. It didn’t used to be like that…I guess I aged into it sometime in my 40’s. No other nuts give me a problem.
I’m allergic to oaks, lilacs, and unspecified trees that bloom in April-May in NYC.
I have oral allergy syndrome (related to the above) to almonds, most stone fruits, raw pea pods, raw carrots & parsnips, and mealy apples (which is really, really weird, because crisp, in-season apples don’t give me any problem at all). All of them make my mouth and throat itch shortly after I eat them if I don’t eat/drink something else shortly afterward.
Tons of white flour without much else gives me heartburn - think a bagel with cream cheese. I have a sensitivity to blue corn, or at least blue corn chips, since I’ve never eaten blue corn in any other form but the chips give me a headache. (Regular corn chips are fine.) Licorice also gives me a headache, which makes no sense to me because it’s all sugar and artificial ingredients.
I have seasonal allergies, so plants and mold do my sinuses in.
And much more fun and rare, my throat swells if I eat anything with basil in it and merely touching anything tainted with the smallest trace of it - like the computer mouse you used hours ago after eating pizza and not washing your hands - gives me hives. Do you have any idea how many foods contain basil?
I was coming home the other night and started having an allergic reaction on the train (itchy face, with spots of itchiness, that turns hot and red) and had to reconstruct what I’d had for dinner about three hours earlier – we’d eaten in a sushi place, and I had a cuke-and-avocado roll and … mini crabcakes, which were delish, but either they had shrimp in them (and either didn’t specify on the menu, in which case they need to change the menu) or I wasn’t reading the menu carefully enough.
Darned unpleasant, and freaky that it took several hours to kick in, and that I reacted to such tiny amounts of shrimp – there were I think five of these tidbits, each about an inch in diameter, and they were mostly crabmeat and the breading, it has to have been minuscule amounts of shrimp.
Either that or my shrimp allergy has extended to crab, which would suck massively.
Allergies: indoor (unspecified), but probably dust. Or mold. Or dust mites. Whatever it is, I can usually get them under control with Zyrtec. They make me sneeze in rapid-fire succession without taking a breath between sneezes: Aaahhhh-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo-choo…CHOO. I get made fun of a lot.
Intolerances: eggs. This one started slowly a few years ago. I thought I was just getting mild food poisoning from undercooked eggs…over and over again…and then I finally put it together that this was a food intolerance. Strangely, I’m fine if I eat the eggs with at least two pieces of bread (thank God, because I’d hate to give up french toast).
Irritations: I don’t know what is going on, but starting a few months ago, the skin on my collar/neck/shoulders area is very irritable. I have to use mild soap without scent and mineral sunscreen only, or I get dermatitis. And sometimes I get it anyway without having been exposed to any discernable triggers. Weird.
The amoxicillin allergy is mild. However, I am VERY allergic to sulfonamides. Head-to-toe hives on every skin surface.
No idea what it is about the pretzels, but I can’t eat them without getting nausea and vomiting. I used to love those Snyder’s Honey Mustard & Onion Bursting With Flavor things, but after throwing up 4 consecutive times after eating them, I finally gave them up. I think it’s something with the onions, because I’ve occasionally had problems with them in other contexts.
I think I’m also developing a small problem with dairy and berries give me gas like you wouldn’t believe. I never eat cherries if I have to be around another person within the next 6 hours.
There was a thread from 2009 about allergies that I hadn’t posted in? Weird.
I am allergic to dust mites.
I am lactose intolerant.
Codeine makes me vomit.
I have asthma so I am sensitive to a lot of things like cigarette smoke, certain chemicals (like bleach and other strong cleaners), perfumes and pollens.
And I may kind of sort of be allergic to myself. I have Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria. I break out in hives for no discernable reason. It seems that the mast cells in my body are fragile and break open releasing their histamine and making me miserable. I am on Zyrtec and Singulair and I take an OTC antihistamine if I get breakthrough hives. A concurrent problem with the urticaria is dermographia, any little scratch makes red welts appear. I can actually write on my skin with a light scratch with a fingernail. I played with a kitten tonight and I look like I crawled through barbed wire or something. I thought it was under control but it recently came back with a vengeance. I also have a new rash on my belly and I can feel something on my back too, not sure if those are related. Sometimes I really hate my skin.
When I was a kid I used to break out in hives when it was cold. Not sure if I was sensitive to the cold or if it was related to my current problem.
That crap they replaced pseudoephedrine with is not just useless. It makes me violently ill. The first time it happened, I only figured I must have been sicker than I thought. The second time was one of those “WTF, only had some sniffles” things. After the third time that stuff is not allowed anywhere near my medicine cabinet.
Another for lactose. If I drink more than a small glass of milk, you will need a gas mask to be in the same room with me,
