The colour of your cat is linked to the allergic reaction? Who knew!
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/allergies-and-the-color-of-your-cat/#comment-564615″
I have always thought these kinds of claims were poppycock, but it is looking official now: Darker cats = more allergies.
The discussion about washing ones cat seems a little ill thought out tho. I actually prefer having eyes in tact and having functioning hands.
As I have a bit of a bias about how to treat cat allergy with allergy drops, www.allergyspecific.com
I recently decided to get in touch with a few animal shelters out there and let them know about our cat allergy treatment. What I found interesting was that many of the staff that I spoke to claimed that ‘real cat lovers’ will not get rid of their cat even if their eyes are swelled shut, but ‘people who don’t want their cats will make up any old excuse to get rid of them’, allergies being a common one.
Now, I am an animal lover, but growing up, my parents did get rid of my cat because of life threatening asthma. I still miss my cat, some 25 years later.
There appears to be this common theme around the perception of allergy sufferers:
whiners
attention seekers
not taking responsibility somehow
we’re too clean
we’re not clean enough
we’re not thinking about our illnesses in the correct way
in your previous life you were a nazi sympathizer.
Ok maybe that last one does not come up that often. But, you get the picture.
Allergy sufferers come in all shapes and sizes and backgrounds. Cat allergy sucks. If you have a cat, chances are, you love it and don’t want to part with it. So don’t! keep your cat, even if it has dark fur.
Treat your allergies in all ways possible and take care of yourself AND your kitty!
Is IgG a reliable food allergy test?
About 8 months ago, I took an IgG food allergy test through a Naturopathic physician. I paid around $250 for the test and the results came back as positive for eggs, dairy, wheat, almonds and a host of other things that required strict avoidance.
Because I had already been scratch tested and came up negative to everything, I thought the IgG test would be beneficial.
I took the results quite seriously and observed a very restricted diet based on those findings. I spent a fortune on things like arrowroot and quinoa flour and rice bread and rice milk. I knew what I had to avoid and I avoided it. I got a bunch of cook books and started following some gluten free blogs and such. I toyed with raw food. I made things like buckwheat pancakes. I mucked around with rice flour until I was blue in the face.
And 4 months later, I didn’t feel better.
Then I got annoyed. I did some research on IgG testing and its legitimacy is hotly debated:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10024224?dopt=Abstract
http://www.revolutionhealth.com/stories/view/99a870bcba9c42579a84dcb37ef7ad9a
But I have also found some studies that cite the reliability of IgG testing:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISW/is_270/ai_n26716244/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8775292
http://gut.bmj.com/content/53/10/1459.abstract
So, because I am lazy and have the attention span of a tumble weed, I used this controversy as an excuse to quit my stupid diet. And now, 4 months away from it, I am back where I started. Feeling highly allergic, frustrated and mislead.
I tested negative on IgE test to all foods.
Anybody out there have any insights?
So your diagnosed with an airborne allergy, now what?
So you went to the Doc and got scratch tested and found out you are allergic to say, tree pollen and grass pollen.
What do you do?
Here are my thoughts based on experience:
1. More than likely, your MD will tell you to get on some sort of steroid nasal inhaler. Studies show that steroid inhalers do reduce inflammation. I personally never had much luck with them. By the time I got the prescription, i was already so inflamed that it did almost no good at all – but some people swear by them.
2 Avoid the allergen wherever possible. Like, if you have a grass allergy, you obviously do not want to roll around on the lawn. and if the pollen count is really high that day, you may not want to go hiking. For indoor living there is stuff you can do:
- use a HEPA air filter. Get a good quality one (I think Honeywell is meant to be good or Amaircare) turn it on in your room an hour before you go to bed with the door shut or keep one going in your main living area. They filter out 99.9 per cent of airborne allergens. of course, you have to keep your windows and doors closed for this to have any real effect.
- depending on your allergy, you may want to get dust mite proof mattress and pillow encasings, get rid of any carpets or dust collectors. For example, in a childs room, get rid of as many stuffies as they will allow. My son needed 3, not all 25 he had. Replace thick drapes with blinds and remove dust collecting bookshelves. Wash the sheets once a week in hot water – that will keep the dust mites at bay. I have heard of those mattress cleaning companies that claim they can suck the dust mites out . that is just not possible. mites are everywhere and microscopic. the best thing to do is encase your mattress so that they can’t continue to feed on your skin cells (I know, its not a good visual, but its the truth)
- get rid of the carpet if you can. They are huge dust, mold and general grossness magnates. my health did not really improve until they were all removed from our house.
- consider desensitization. You may have heard of allergy shots or sublingual allergy drops. Shots are effective, but they are time consuming – you have to do a build up of a shot every week for six weeks and then maintain at your top tolerated dose once a month for 3 to 5 years. Every time you get a shot, you have to wait in the Dr’s office for 1/2 an hour to make sure there is no systemic reaction. Plus, it is a hard sell to get a child to agree to get a needle on a regular basis. Allergy drops offer a good alternative see my entry on allergy drops to find out more…
Allergy Shots? Allergy Drops? Whats the deal?
Traditionally in North America, if you want to treat your specific allergies, you go to your Doctor and get tested, find out what you are allergic to, and then do allergy shots.
Typically, to get going with allergy shots, the Doctor takes your test results and writes a prescription for allergy serum. The prescription, which is basically a recipe using all of the allergens you reacted to, is then sent to a lab to be custom made your you. There will be usually 3 or 4 vials which are numbered 1 through 3 or 4. Number 1 is the weakest vial and the higher number is the strongest vial. The idea with allergy shots is for the patient to receive a shot weekly and to build up as quickly as is safely possible to the strongest vial, otherwise known as the Top Tolerated Dose. This top tolerated dose is then maintained with a monthly allergy shot done by a medical professional in office. This means taking the time off of work or school to drive down to the Doctors office, wait to get seen, have the shot and then wait an additional 30 minutes in the reception area to make sure you don’t have a severe reaction. This is the same type of treatment that has been offered for nearly 40 years. It has pretty good results for desensitization, but lets face it; its a pain in the arm! And anyways, who has time to take for that kind of thing?
Allergy Drops, which have pretty much replaced shots in the UE now, are an alternative to shots. Allergy drops, also known as Sublingual Allergy Drops or SLIT are the most widely prescribed allergy immunotherapy in Europe and are just as effective as shots and have considerably less safety risks.
In Europe, they are available by prescription only, but here in Canada they are available in lower doses over the counter (OTC). Companies like http://www.pollenguard.com and http://www.aidrops.com are the first to sell sublingual allergy drops as a natural health product over the counter. You can expect there will be more because this is the growing trend. You still have to go to the Doctor for prescription strength, but it is way easier to comply with the treatment. Take one drop 2 or 3 times daily under the tongue. That’s it! no long waits in the doctors office. no risk of anaphylaxis (as there is with shots).
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- who wants a needle?
How do you know its an allergy?
I found this pdf a couple of weeks ago put out by the US Department of Health and Human Services and I think its a pretty good checklist to see whether you have a cold or allergies.
www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/allergicDiseases/PDF/ColdAllergy.pdf
Bottom line is this: if the symptoms carry on for weeks, chances are you have an allergy.
Some of you may be willing to muddle through allergy season by taking antihistamines. But many allergy sufferers find limited relief with long term use of antihistamines. I will get into the reasons for this in subsequent posts.
So, then, if you are pretty sure you have allergies the best thing to do is find out what you are allergic to. You can do that by:
- Deducing the symptoms by the allergy season in your area – for example, if you live in BC and your symptoms were aggravated in February, chances are you are allergic to trees of some sort.
- Get allergy tested. Go to your family Doctor and ask for a referral to an Allergist. Or, in some provinces, you can pay to go to a Naturopathic Doctor for the same test.
The most common type of allergy test is called the IgE mediated response. This is the ‘scratch’ or ‘skin prick’ test. This type of test can diagnose specific allergies to all of the notorious culprits:
- trees
- weeds
- grasses
- molds
- inhalants (like feathers, house dust, tobacco etc )
Of course, there are also a whole host of foods people have IgE mediated responses to as well. If there is risk of anaphylactic shock, the Doctor may not test you using this method, but here are the most common ones:
- peanuts
- tree nuts
- eggs
- shellfish
- dairy
- soy
Once you have a diagnosis, there are many ways to commence treatment, depending on the severity of your symptoms, the type of allergy you have, other health factors etc. But the more you know, the more you can do.
More to come!
lub
AllerGenny
Hello world!
Thus Allergies Blow Blog. There is SO MUCH information out there about treating allergy and thanks in part to the ever so inclusive world wide web, it is not easy to differentiate true scientific research and proven systems of treatment with strange multilevel marketing claims. I want this to truly provide good, pertinent and valuable info for all of you allergy sufferers out there. lets figure this out!
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