Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I am allergic to mold, definitely. Everytime it rains for a period of time, even when I eat food that has been left out for too long, I feel it. However, I have symptoms that no one takes seriously or really even believes in, and they are no where to be found on the interwebs. It starts off with about 2 days of body aches, sort of flu-like achiness. This is often times coupled with a sore throat. Then it goes to post nasal drip, completly skipping stuffy or runny nose, straight to the drip. A day or two later the stuffy sinuses start while the achiness etc goes away. Is this at all normal?

What are your strange allergy symptoms?

I'm allergic to newspaper print and photocopier toner. It makes my eyes itch and throat dry out and my skin go raw...

Have you spoken to a doctor about this?

I haven't been in a swimming pool in years, so this may no longer be true (most of my other childhood allergies have gone away or abated to the level of minor inconvenience), but chlorinated water would make me sneeze and my nose run uncontrollably. I was also fairly self conscious about my weight as a teenager, so yeah, I was the kid wearing his shirt at the pool parties and dripping mucus everywhere. I was also, coincidentally, the kid who never got laid in high school.

I actually gave up dairy because I had unexplained head-to-toe chronic hives every morning when I got up, every single day, for three years. I went to allergists and immunologists and they told me it couldn't possibly be a food reaction or allergy since I only had them upon waking up in the morning, not shortly after eating something. They did all sorts of allergy tests and kept trying to blame my cats. After years of this and being on multiple prescriptions to keep the hives minimized to only my hands and torso, I decided to look at my diet (I was lacto-ovo veg at the time) and decided since milk is full of immunoglobulins and clearly my immune system was already being over-reactive I would eliminate dairy and see what happened. Within two days all hive episodes were gone and I continued like this for about 3 months. I wanted to confirm that dairy was the culprit, so I ate some dairy at that point. Woke up the next morning with hives again, went vegan for good and within 2 days they were gone again and it's been over a year now.

Stupid doctors told me to not even try to figure it out because I'd only drive myself crazy and that there was no way it was a food allergy or sensitivity.

I have to be extremely cautious in handling uncooked fennel, because it gives me huge skin rashes. Which is bizarre, because I can eat it no problem. Cilantro's sort of similar except I don't get a bumpy rash, my skin just reddens and itches terribly. It perplexes me terribly that two foods which don't at all bother me to ingest can cause allergy-like reactions in my skin, and I have never talked about it with a doctor because I don't want to be told that I am full of nonsense.

Chlorine, chemical scents (anything no essential oils, and ammonia produce an asthma reaction in me, but I don't technically have asthma. I react to little else that way.
I'm reactive to everything. Molds, trees, weeds, pollen, dairy, eggs, beef, fish, poultry. But not the big three Wheat, Soy and Peanut. I make no sense.

I am allergic to dust and dairy. Diary makes my skin break out, and dust causes hives.

I'm allergic to dust, my dog (well, all dogs), cats, and feathers.
I have had all sorts of weird symptoms, and although my allergies are not seasonal, changing seasons usually trigger more severe attacks. My allergist said that is common and likely just due to weakened immune response allowing the allergies to "attack." So maybe it's something like that.

My flatmate gets awful rashes from touching raw potato, and can get them from being in the same room as it while it is prepared, but is fine eating cooked potatoes.
I suppose cooking alters the proteins that are causing the allergic response, so the body doesn't react to the antigenic markers in the same way.

my kid gets horrific facial swelling and alligator skin if:
-she eats coloring or flavoring (ESPECIALLY red or purple)
-she eats chocolate
-she eats non-vegan stuff like fish, cheese or smoked meat stuff (which she never has)
AND
gets a mosquito bite at the same time.

One does nothing. But doing both cause scary, run-to-the-hospital reactions. The doctor is remarkably calm about it, and says we can do allergy testing if we want to (we do NOT want to) and we try to keep a good eye on food intake and using bug spray.

I pass out if I receive those yellow eyedrops at the eye doctor's. I'm out cold in seconds. He insisted it was because I was getting myself nervous over the eye exam, but it's happened 2x before, always the same way. I spoke to my doctor and she confirmed it as an allergy. I had her write a note to my eye doctor, who filed it but continued to insist it was because I'm a girl and I was getting myself all nervous.
I see a different eye doctor now.

According to my mom, when I was a little kid, I threw up whenever she gave me a yellow pain medicine (a syrup because I was a kid). So yeah, yellow #5*. But only in large amounts. I can eat food with it fine.

*also in the eye drops

Dairy allergies in adults tend not to be IgE-mediated, more likely IgG, and manifest with a delay. From what I've read no one really know how exactly they work either. If I accidentally eat something that contains milk my nose will start itching and running a few hours later, often not until the next day. One of my friends actually thought I was making this up. I'm also allergic to pollen, feathers and react to raw nuts, carrots and apple peel (this is because of tree pollen allergies).

I have no idea if it's normal, but I get the achiness too, as well as weird painful areas on my skin and I feel like I have a low-grade fever. So far no one has been able to link it to anything but seasonal allergies, but I'm not super confident that's the problem.

I get itchy rashes if I try on clothes in the store or wear new clothes without washing them first. They stick around for a long time afterwards though. Maybe that's not that weird? But I've never heard of that happening to other people.

I'm allergic to Band-Aids. I get a nasty red rash that's the exact shape of the bandage, and it stays there long after the wound is gone.

I have a friend who has this problem. I think he can actually try stuff on but if he wears it any longer prior to washing it he breaks out.

I used to too and I always thought it was the adhesive I was allergic to. Now they seem to have stopped making most bandaids from latex and they no longer irritate me, so the latex must have been my issue all along (condoms bother me a bit too.)

I get that too! Mainly when I eat fruit/vegs that are even remotely soft. Happened to me once when I didn't notice that a loaf of bread had a tiny bit of mold on it (not the slice I ate, but the end of the loaf...). I'll be sick for days with flu like symptoms. I thought it was just me.
I was extremely sickly from mold or something when I was young. I would constantly get strep and horrible ear infections and was diagnosed w/ chronic bronchitis. I moved into a different house when I was 17 or 18 and have not had any of those illnesses since.

I'm allergic to banana, avacado, kiwi and pineapple. They give me an itchy mouth and throat as well as stomach pains. I sometimes have the same problems with quinoa too.

Sprout, I've had achy flu like symptoms from my seasonal allergies.
Coldandsleepy, when I eat bananas, if I let the fruit touch my lips, my lips break out in large itchy bumps. But as long as am careful to put the banana in my mouth without letting it touch my lips and chew it more in the back of my mouth so it doesn't contact my lips while I'm chewing, I'm fine. People usually get freaked out when I tell them this and say that just to be safe I should avoid banana altogether. I can see their point, but I think I love bananas too much to give them up unless I start having other reactions.

I think allergies are so annoying. I grew up with cats, and then when I was sixteen, we went to Italy for the summer. Maybe we were gone six or seven weeks. When we came home, I was deathly allergic to my cats. What the fizzle!? All these years later, I do have a cat. I have some stuffiness for sure, but I've mostly built up a tolerance for him (and decided I probably won't ever get a cat again). Then, last weekend I was visiting a cousin with two cats and practically died (not really) because I couldn't breath at ALL, my eyes were watering, I was sneezing, and my face got all itchy. How could I be so used to my cat and then wheezing desperately around someone else's cat? The whole thing just sucks, because. I love cats. I am also allergic to dust, but I'm ok with that. My doctor told me that my boyfriend has to do all the dusting. Score! So, I guess that is the upside. :)

I'm allergic to eggs, dairy, and sulfities. My doctor tried for two years to say that I was imagining that I was allergic to eggs, dairy and products that had sulfities. However when I eat eggs I get major gas issue plus I get a crazy rash down my neck onto my back. Same thing happens when I drink dairy but when I accidentally eat dairy I usually throw up right away within minutes of eating or drinking dairy. I became allergic to sulfities due to a major drug reaction that put me in ICU ward overnight because of how bad the reaction was. That's where I got allergic to sulfities and my doctor still denies that I'm imagining it but when I eat anything was sulfities in it. My eyes swell shut almost all the way my face turns bright red.