Surely It Can’t Be an Allergy - I’m Not Sneezing!

It frequently surprises me how often a fairly obvious allergic reaction gets overlooked - by patients and doctors alike - in favor of some other diagnosis, because the symptoms don’t “seem like allergies.”

One thing I have learned over 30 plus years of practice is that, while there are certainly some symptoms that occur for the majority of people with allergic reactions, there’s a wide variety of less-common symptoms that may show up in certain allergy sufferers.

There’s really four main types of allergens: inhaled/airborne, ingested (foods, drinks, oral medications, etc.), skin contact, and “injected” (actual injections like vaccines or things like insect stings that penetrate the skin). Each type has symptoms that are commonly associated with it.

A lot of people automatically think of the inhaled/airborne type when they hear the term “allergies.” Inhaled allergens like mold, pollen, and pet dander typically cause upper respiratory symptoms such as congestion, sneezing, and coughing. These same airborne allergens may also cause itchy, watery, or otherwise irritated eyes as they contact them.

Ingested allergens may also cause congestion and respiratory symptoms, but also commonly produce gastrointestinal symptoms and skin reactions, such as hives.

Skin contact allergens typically produce skin reactions (but other reactions are certainly possible). Usually the skin reactions will be seen first and be most intense in the areas that the allergen came in contact with the skin, particularly if it’s in an area of moisture to increase the contact. For example, an allergy to laundry detergent will produce skin irritation in the areas where clothes are tightest-fitting and where sweat might accumulate between the clothing and skin.

“Injected” allergens usually produce swelling, itching, redness, and/or pain first in the immediate area where the injection occurred, possibly spreading out from that point as the allergen is carried in the blood circulation and spreads out from the injection site.

Any allergen has the potential to trigger a severe reaction known as an anaphylactic response in which intense inflammatory swelling of the tissues occurs, to the point where breathing may be impaired and may be life-threatening. Fortunately, such reactions are relatively rare, and usually do not occur the first time one experiences an allergic reaction to a particular thing. Most people will get a few less-severe reactions initially that build up to the severe reaction with future exposures to the allergens, thereby warning them to take precautions like carrying an epi-pen in the event of anaphylaxis.

So, the typical allergic reactions will often point to the most likely suspects, but oftentimes the symptoms of allergies are missed by those experiencing them, as well as their health care providers. Upper respiratory symptoms tend to be recognized as allergies relatively quickly, as other common causes for such symptoms - like viral and bacterial infections - can be tested for, and ruled in or out pretty promptly. But gastrointestinal and skin allergic reactions may not be as easily recognized for what they are, leading to delays of weeks, months, or more before diagnosed.

Gastrointestinal allergic reactions may be diagnosed as things like reflux or inflammatory bowel disease, which technically might or might not be correct (the allergy may cause reflux and/or inflammation in the GI tract), but the cause may be completely missed and instead, symptoms are simply suppressed to varying degrees of success with drugs that do nothing to quell the allergy-mediated inflammation.

Similarly, allergic skin responses may be misdiagnosed as conditions such as ringworm (due to a fungal infection, not a worm as suggested by the name), or “dermatitis” (which by itself simply means inflammation of the skin without any attribution of cause, as opposed to something more specific such as “allergic dermatitis” or “contact dermatitis”).

This brings me to the observation I’ve had over the years that pretty much ANY symptom could be due at least in part to ANY type of allergen or combination of allergens.

For example, I had a patient who reacted to certain perfumes and colognes by literally passing out! She didn’t get congested, her eyes didn’t get watery, she would start feeling woozy and if she didn’t get away from the offending substance, she would actually lose consciousness! When she described this to me, I didn’t think it was an allergic response, but she did show a neuromuscular reflex indicative of being allergic to a few samples of perfume, so I did a bioenergetic desensitization procedure and guess what? She stopped passing out around people wearing perfume and cologne!

As I said, symptoms can be almost anything and almost anything can provoke an allergic response. Sometimes only a particular combination of things will provoke the response and it can be hard to figure out what the problem is.

One time, I had a young patient who experienced various symptoms only when the babysitter took care of him at his home. My first thought was probably perfume or something about the babysitter. But after further investigation, that did not appear to be the case. It was very perplexing because the symptoms occurred in his own home and only when the babysitter took care of him. With a little detective work, we figured out that the babysitter consistently fed him lunch consisting of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich – something his parents almost never gave him to eat.

But muscle response testing didn’t show any problems with peanuts, nor any other food nor common combinations thereof – until I tested him with peanuts and a fur sample from the family’s dog (which by itself also did not show any reactions). The combination of peanuts and the pet hair was the problem. We were able to correct the issue with bioenergetic methods, although I did release him with the recommendation to avoid eating any peanut butter covered dogs, just to be on the safe side.

As illustrated by that last example, combinations of allergens don’t even have to be the same type of allergen to create problems. Airborne allergens combined with foods, foods combined with contact allergens, etc. can often provoke reactions when the individual allergens do not. And combinations don’t even have to be present simultaneously, especially when one or more of the allergens are foods – they can cause issues up to a few days later!

Combinations of allergens can often contribute to allergies being disregarded as a possible cause of a patient’s symptoms, even when they are pretty typcial for a given kind of allergy. I suspect that it’s also why different methods of testing will sometime yield very different results. For example, if one does conventional allergy testing, the testing protocol is to do particular groups of allergens together, and the same groups for everyone. But if a combination is of allergens is spread across different groups, some pretty significant allergies can be missed. And since most allergy testing doesn’t test airborne allergens at the same time as ingested allergens, and contact allergens are typically not tested at all, a lot can potentially be missed. So, just because an allergy test failed to identify any problematic allergens, it doesn’t completely rule out an allergic reaction as the culprit.

There are of course several ways to handle allergies, from medications to allergy shots to holistic methods such as the bioenergetic desensitization method I use (it’s an acupressure-based method that essentially “re-sets” the body to a more normal level of reactivity and helps normalize function – I don’t “treat allergies” per se – I just re-set the body back to “factory specs” and that usually brings the reactions down). No method is perfect, nor works for everyone. But if allergies aren’t even considered as a potential cause for a patient’s symptoms, none of them work at all, because they won’t ever be used!

The takeaway I’d like you to get from this article is that allergic reactions can manifest in a wide array of symptoms, which may not always be correctly identified as being caused by allergies. Simply keeping an open mind about the possibility that a given symptom pattern could be allergic in nature may be valuable in finding relief, particularly when the treatments and interventions tried for other proposed causes are not getting the desired results.

Until next time…

George Best, D.C.