Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Life: Fighting Hay Fever

I have never really had hay fever before this year. On the rare occasion that I have hay fever, it usually occurs in the morning particularly a cold morning (or at least I thought it was a cold morning). Once I get to class, work, or whatever activity, it disappears. Usually all I have is a runny nose and (on bad days) lots of sneezing.

This year, I have the runny nose, sneezing, and itchy eyes. Recently it has been getting better, so I am trying to figure out the source of this problem. I read at whatallergy.com some foods that would help, but these do not seem to help me because I use a lot of garlic and onion in my food, squeeze lemons and limes into my water, eat fish, etc. I have done that more so than in the past.

Since it does not seem like it is my diet, there have been other odd things in my health. I seem to get random rashes this year. I think it has to do with mold. My parents' home was flooded so I had helped clean that. My dad being himself probably did not clean the mold properly. After a period of time, I started to get tingly feelings every time I go into the basement which I thought was just psychological since who really wants to spend their time cleaning a basement and being yelled at as if I had special powers to prevent a storm.

They are also in the process of moving, so some of the things have been transferred to my place. I noticed that I would get tingly feelings when doing certain things like cleaning dishes. My body also seem to react in certain places. Thinking back, I was cleaning dishes from my parents' or near stuff that was recently moved over. Besides my parents' stuff, I noticed that I also get it when I was cleaning old dishes (guilty of not always cleaning my dishes :S). So, I started to suspect that I have developed some allergy to mold.

To confirm this, I've moved back to my main bedroom (I was sleeping in my second bedroom because they had to re-carpet my condo and was too lazy to move back later). My body seems to be getting much better and I have been sleeping much better too. My hay fever has not quite gone away yet but seems a little better.

Also, I have noticed that my hay fever will temporarily disappear while I eat. There does not seem to be any correlation whether I am snacking or eating a meal, or whether it is hot, cold, or room temperature. Within maybe 5 minutes of not eating, the hay fever will come right back as if I never ate.

Counter to mold, I had the worst "hay fever"-like symptoms when I visited Vancouver. I do not know what it but I think that could only be pollen since it was not as bad indoors where there is air-conditioning. I also did not get any sleep the night before and only "slept" a few hours in the plane. I think I may just have had a cold since it started during the flight there.


Reference:
http://whatallergy.com/2010-07/ten-foods-to-fight-hayfever
http://www.energiseforlife.com/wordpress/2009/04/06/hay-fever-cure/

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