I'm
going to start today's column with a cheap joke (and anyone who
says, "So what else is new?" will have to sit in the corner for
the next two hours). Here's the joke: allergies are nothing to
sneeze at. I warned you, didn't I?
.....Anyway, I hope that little bit
of crummy humour didn't persuade you to abandon the rest of this
column because the point of that joke was that allergies are a
serious problem that cause much more misery than the allergy-free
might imagine.
.....This will, I'm sure, surprise
lots of those people who've never suffered chronic nasal congestion,
or runny eyes, or a chronic sore throat from exposure to dust
or cats or some types of grass (I mean, of course, the stuff that
grows on lawns, not the kind my old Free Clinic patients used
to smoke) and who figure that on a scale of misery of 1 to 10,
a chronic runny nose merits a score of about minus 6, but allergy
symptoms can make you feel miserable. According to a study published
in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine,
young adults who had both asthma and allergic rhinitis ("rhinitis"
is inflammation of the nasal passages, a runny nose, in other
words) complained that their allergies exacted as great a |
toll on
their quality of life as asthma did, and asthma is, of course,
a disorder that has significant negative effects on quality
of life.
..... Why did the allergic rhinitis
sufferers complain so much? It could just be that people with
allergies like to complain, but it's more likely that although
allergic rhinitis did not limit the physical activities of most
of these people - it's a stretch, after all,
to argue that your runny nose prevented you from playing squash
- their allergy symptoms did lead to these allergy sufferers
complaining of considerably more "social problems, emotional
problems, and poorer mental well-being than subjects without
(allergies)." To a certain extent, though, the misery of allergic
rhinitis is avoidable. The best strategy, of course, is to avoid
coming in contact with the precipitating agent (what doctors
call the "allergen"). Thus, if you're
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allergic
to cats, for example, getting a kitty to keep you company at
night might be good for your spirits, but it's certainly not
good for your immune system.
.....Similarly, if you're allergic
to dust, as so many of us are, it's important to avoid dust
exposure as much as possible, which is why my wife gets me to
vacuum the house much more often than I offer to do on my own,
although what really bugs me about that is that she doesn't
have any allergies. It isn't, however, easy to avoid certain
allergens. For example, a study in the Journal of Allergy and
Clinical Immunology found that clothing is an important source
of exposure to dust and cat allergen, especially wool clothing.
Apparently dust mites and cat dander stick to clothing, and
it's not only hard to get them out of clothes, which can obviously
be a real pain for the person wearing that allergen-soaked sweater,
but that garment, this study found, can also produce symptoms
in other allergic people who come in close contact with the
wearer.
.....Another strategy to avoid
the misery of certain allergies is to take medications, especially
preemptively. So, given that we're moving into high allergy
season here on the wet coast,
Continued
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