Allergies: Too Much Goddamn Pollen

What do you currently eat and drink in a day? Eating lots of refined carbs can lead to inflammation and make hyper-immunity conditions worse, so lowering carb intake to just fruit and veggies can cause some slight suppression of the immune system, which is bad for lean and healthy people, but can be beneficial for people with hyper-immune issues (allergies, asthma etc). So you'd eat fruits and veggies, nuts, beans, berries, meat/fish/poultry/eggs and limited amounts of dairy. You wouldn't do it year long, but at least for the allergy season and see how it goes.

I'll tell you a good way to build up an immunity to allergies. Buy and eat local honey. Local honey contains the pollen of local plants and when you ingest it, you build up a defense for your allergies.

Have you ever tried getting allergy shots before? They're only temporary, but they actually do help for a while. I normally have the same problem, but when I get an allergy shot, I usually feel much better in two or three days.

Allegra works really well. I missed about 4 days of school due to my throat swelling up, and this was when I was using Claritin; however, since I've been using Allegra, I haven't had any problems with my throat. I would definitely recommend it.

I took Zyrtec for years before I switched due to the same reasons you're complaining about. Switch your medication ASAP. You won't regret it.

e; I tried Claritin during the beginning of the pollen season, but that didn't do much either, so I would go straight to Allegra. It might differ from person to person, but I still haven't had a problem.

Here's my update. Zyrtec alone was giving me about 40% relief from my allergies. Allegra alone, after 3 days of running it once daily, was giving me about 55% relief.

Now, I take one Zyrtec and one Allegra together in the morning. 90-95% better now. Better than me taking 3 Zyrtec a day for less relief. I know, this may be frowned upon, but suicide was the only other option. I joke...

Have you tried going to a doctor and seeing if any prescription allergy pills such as Clarinex or Singular would work for you? Or even prescription nose sprays. Or if those don't work, do you have an allergist around your area you can visit and ask them about antigen immunotherapy drops? I just started using those drops a little over a year ago and they have made the biggest change of my life.

Feel free to skip all of the stuff below, but I'll tell you my life story regarding my allergies to try to give context to just how bad my allergies were and how much I've improved since after visiting my allergist first the first time last year. I'll put **** towards the bottom where I talk about my first allergist visit if you want to just read that part and skip my past.

I'll be 24 next month, but I've suffered through extremely bad allergies my whole life starting at about five years of age. They were so bad that I would miss a couple months worth of school days during a school year because I felt so horrible I had no energy to even move. It was like someone's WORST cold or flu (minus throwing up) that they ever had, but doubled, or sometimes even more, in severity. Not only that, but my allergies were so bad that they taxed my immune system so badly I got sick from pretty much anything and caught anything other people around me had. I got strep throat and ear/sinus infections at least once a month, sometimes more. I also got bronchitis several years a year, and if someone around me had the cold or flu, I got that easily too. My allergies literally ruined my life and unlike seasonal allergies, my allergies lasted year around 24/7. There was never a period of time I felt better than usual.

From the start of my problems I went to the doctor and at the time she just automatically assumed I had allergies. We never had an allergist around here so you couldn't get testing, so she would put me on one type of prescription allergy medicine, such as Allerga that was prescription only at the time, and tell me to take it for a month. When that didn't work she would put me on the decongestant version of that medicine for a month, which also didn't work. I went through the ENTIRE line of every prescription allergy pill they had and NONE of them worked. So she started giving me prescription nose sprays, none of them worked as well. She finally said there was nothing more she could do for me. I was around 10 at that time.

When I was 11 I had one of the worst allergy seasons I ever had at the time that lasted months. When it started to calm down I had found I had lost my entire sense of smell. No matter how strong or horrible a smell was, I could no longer smell anything. It was during this time I turned to OTC pills and sprays. I tried every single product I could get my hands on that was sold around here (and tried any new ones that came out) and of course, none of them worked. I was around 15-16 then.

****FINALLY last year, a few months before I turned 23, I saw a commercial on tv for an allergy clinic a few hours from me. I called instantly and made an appointment. I went in last march thinking the worst, nothing had helped me before, how could this do anything different? I figured the allergist would have a really hard time, but he looked me over, asked me some questions, and said my symptoms were typical and they could easily help me out.

I got my first allergy test, and I found out I'm pretty much allergic to outside. I live on a farm in an EXTREMELY rural part of Wisconsin. There's nothing but fields, farms, and woods around me for tens of miles in every direction. It turned out I had "extremely strong" allergies so several kinds of grasses, several kinds of weeds, several kinds of trees, several kinds of mildew, pollen, and dust mites. On their allergy scale, "Severe" is the highest you can be on it and that's reserved for things like peanut or shellfish allergies where people can actually die. I was right below Severe under the Extremely Strong list, where I wouldn't die from my allergies, but they'll completely *bleep* with my life.

It might be hard to see because I took pictures from my cell, but this is what my arm looked like during my first allergy test:

First two rows

Third Row

It took over a week for those bumps to go away and when they did they left scars I had to treat with a scar diminishing cream.

I was put on their special "Lacrosse" version of sublingual anti-gen drops. The purpose of these drops are to help your immune system actually become immune to what you're allergic to so you will no longer have any symptoms. Basically, the drops are made from your actual allergies suspended in a liquid you take under your tongue three times a day for two to five years that comes in three "stages". The first stage (0-3 months) is your body getting used to the drops. Stage two (3 months - two years) is your symptoms going away. Depending on how severe your allergies are your symptoms can be completely gone. The final stage (2-5 years) has your immune system completely changed and adjusted so there will be no symptoms at all, nor should you have to take any kind of pills or sprays again. This isn't true for some people since not everyone experiences the same results, and sometimes the drops will work good enough for people to be able to take something like Allegra and have it actually work perfectly for them.

I had to go back for a check up four months later. This is what my arm looked like during my follow up allergy test to see how well the drops were working:

After four months of being on the allergy drops

A half hour later

My arm was completely clear within the first hour and no scars were left.

I'm going back for my third visit at the end of May to see how much progress I've made in the past year since my last visit (I'm on Stage Two right now). I can tell you that these drops have made the most dramatic change I could ever pray for. While I do have some symptoms, they're not anyone CLOSE to how I used to be growing up. I can function normally as a person and be able to do normal things, like just go shopping, without feeling like I'm going to die. There are some days when the pollen is really high and on days like those I still feel pretty bad and stay inside if I can help it, but those days aren't nearly as common as they used to be.

The BEST news out of all of this? As of about four or five months ago I notice that my smell has slowly been coming back. After over a decade of being without my sense of smell, I'm able to start noticing different things around me, such as lavender or cinnamon. I have a long ways to go before my sense of smell fully returns, or where my allergy symptoms are fully managed and gone, but after being on this drop treatment for a full year I have complete confidence by the end of the fifth year I'll be a completely normal and healthy person.