Mountain Cedar Allergy

[dfspcc20]

It's mountain cedar (a.k.a. juniperus ashei, ashe juniper) season here in Texas. It's resulting in annoying allergy symptoms for my son and I- watery, itchy eyes and sneezing mostly. I've never experienced this before moving here from up north years ago. My wife and daughter seem to be spared, thankfully.

Has anyone had success dealing with this seasonal allergy, or other tree pollen-related allergy? What helped the most for you?

I've had many other improvements with a Peat-inspired diet and lifestyle, and my metabolism seems OK- 75+ pulse whenever I check, 98.6 temps after eating. I get 100+ grams of protein, 300+ grams of carbohydrate per day, 2+ grams of calcium, usually hit micro nutrient targets whenever I'm not too lazy to enter all my food in chronometer, sun and lots of light, stimulating work, enjoyable exercise/movement, etc.. This is constant through the year, yet these symptoms only show up when mountain cedar pollen counts are high.

Benedryl and/or cyproheptadine do alleviate some symptoms, but also seem to make my eyes and nose very dry, which is annoying. And they sap my concentration and focus if I take them for too long, making it difficult to get work done. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, sort of, I suppose.

Any suggestions appreciated!

Juniperus ashei - Wikipedia

 

[Queequeg]

a zapper has worked wonders for my tree allergies. I like this one:
Orgone Zapper Standard

 

[NathanK]

Cedar fever is the worst! I have been struggling with it for a long time. Its typically from the end of Dec to beginning of March.

I used to get shots after I moved back, which helped, but was a major time consumer and you can only do for a max of 5 years.

Otherwise, my protocol is nondrowsy prescription levocitrizine antihistamine, nasal steroid, and Ketoifen eye drops. Irrigating the nose often, hepafilters, and keeping your home very clean helps.

I only started to get these allergies maybe when i was 21, which was a few years after i had moved here. I was extremely fit, but was under a lot of stress, and believe the stress triggered estrogen to kick off my allergy battle. Theoretically, fixing the estrogen should fix the allergies, but thats more a long term plan (lose excess estrogenic fat is my plan).

Until then, its all about managing the reactions. You have to stay on top of it by taking your antihistamines and nasal spray daily. It can take up to 3 days after being exposed to allergens to show the symptoms. Iow, a high cedar day yesterday may not show up fully in you until tomorrow.

 

[dfspcc20]

a zapper has worked wonders for my tree allergies. I like this one:
Orgone Zapper Standard

What does an orgone zapper do, and how would it improve allergy symptoms? Not trying to attack your comment or anything- I'm just pretty clueless about the Wilhelm Reich stuff (assuming that's what's this is related to).

 

[dfspcc20]

Cedar fever is the worst! I have been struggling with it for a long time. Its typically from the end of Dec to beginning of March.

I used to get shots after I moved back, which helped, but was a major time consumer and you can only do for a max of 5 years.

Otherwise, my protocol is nondrowsy prescription levocitrizine antihistamine, nasal steroid, and Ketoifen eye drops. Irrigating the nose often, hepafilters, and keeping your home very clean helps.

I only started to get these allergies maybe when i was 21, which was a few years after i had moved here. I was extremely fit, but was under a lot of stress, and believe the stress triggered estrogen to kick off my allergy battle. Theoretically, fixing the estrogen should fix the allergies, but thats more a long term plan (lose excess estrogenic fat is my plan).

Until then, its all about managing the reactions. You have to stay on top of it by taking your antihistamines and nasal spray daily. It can take up to 3 days after being exposed to allergens to show the symptoms. Iow, a high cedar day yesterday may not show up fully in you until tomorrow.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. It scares me a little if this is related to estrogen, since my 6-year old son is getting worse symptoms than me now. He's lean, active, intelligent, sleeps well, poops well, etc., so I wouldn't immediately think estrogen with him.

We've been really lax about the hygiene aspect of it. Thinking back, it only starting being an issue for me in the past 3-4 years, even though I've been in Texas for 11 years. I one change in the past 3-4 years is I've been showering a lot less, maybe 2-3 times per week. And my son would be happy if he never had to shower or bathe. So if we're accumulating pollen in our hair and on our skin, I see how that could make it worse, especially at night. We'll work on that, as well as changing bedsheets more often, and getting hepa filters.

Just curious. This might be more of a question for @haidut or someone more knowledgeable. In a healthy/ideal organism, what would the preferred response be to a foreign substance (such as pollen) getting into the mucous membranes or airways?

 

[NathanK]

When it comes to children, i think epigenetics plays a big factor. Much like how my daughter is allergic to cats like I am. She hasnt shown strong signs of cedar issues thankfully and she's 8. I also have similar allergies as my mother.

Changing sheets is a good idea. Minimize all other mild allergens as well. This could be offensive foods, perfumes, animals in the house or sleeping in beds or bedrooms, or even removing cedar trees from backyards (my cousin did that).

The response to allergens in our airways is exactly what you said, inflammation and specifically mucous. Mucous is protecting the lining of our lungs and pathways from further insults getting in. How or why some substances effect us differently is a longer discussion.

 

[NathanK]

Btw, Ray said in an interview once that coffee turns off histamine production.

That said, so does caffeine, ephedra, yohimbine, atropine, exercise, and anything else that increases adrenaline. Acetylcholine reaction in the cell is largely responsible for our allergy reactions and adrenaline competes with it:
Antagonism of acetylcholine by adrenaline antagonists. - PubMed - NCBI

If you want to try, you could attempt to limit the amino acid histadine in your diet as Ray implied in one article. That could potentially be done by supplementing beta alanine to compete with H transport. Though, there are contrasting reports of people actually curing allergies by supplementing histadine. Its worth the experiment

 

[Queequeg]

What does an orgone zapper do, and how would it improve allergy symptoms? Not trying to attack your comment or anything- I'm just pretty clueless about the Wilhelm Reich stuff (assuming that's what's this is related to).

A zapper is similar to Reich but instead of using various frequencies the zapper uses a single frequency square wave electrical current. On/off/on... I think the idea is that the electrical current shocks/disrupts any pathogens in the blood enough for the white blood cells to remove them. As for allergies I have no idea how it works but I do get significant if not 100% relief during allergy season. Also Ive noticed the need for zapping due to allergies has gone down over time. Lots of users report similar benefits for their allergies.

 

[lampofred]

I don't estrogen would aggravate this. I have the same issue, very severe cedar allergies in Texas, and they get much worse when I supplement progesterone. Coffee is the only thing that even mildly helps, even Zyrtec and Benadryl are inffective for me.

 

[NathanK]

I don't estrogen would aggravate this. I have the same issue, very severe cedar allergies in Texas, and they get much worse when I supplement progesterone. Coffee is the only thing that even mildly helps, even Zyrtec and Benadryl are inffective for me.

I modestly tried some Progestene locally under my scratchy eyes and over my maxillary sinus cavities (had painful cyst form in there that gets infected) and I didn't notice much. Though I'm a man and didn't want to overdo it. Ray has said it should help multiple times, FWIW. It's pretty well known that estrogen is an inflammatory mediator/ catalyst in allergies. The literature is easy to read, but not always easy in practice. The struggle continues...

Just a cursory search and it's hard to find stuff that doesn't call estrogen the "female hormone"
Role of Estrogen in Allergic Reactions

Estrogen effects in allergy and asthma
"...Estrogen receptors are found on numerous immunoregulatory cells and estrogen’s actions skew immune responses toward allergy. It may act directly to create deleterious effects in asthma, or indirectly via modulation of various pathways including secretory leukoprotease inhibitor, transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 ion channel and nitric oxide production to exert effects on lung mechanics and inflammation. Not only do endogenous estrogens appear to play a role, but environmental estrogens have also been implicated. Environmental estrogens (xenoestrogens) including bisphenol A and phthalates enhance allergic sensitization in animal models and may enhance development of atopic disorders like asthma in humans...

Estrogens promote the degranulation of mast cell/basophils
"In the immediate hypersensitivity reaction, poly-valent allergen cross-links IgE bound to mast cells through FcεRI inducing release of preformed mediators and cytokines by a process of degranulation and induction of the synthesis of prostaglandins, leukotrienes, and additional cytokines. The release of the major mediators of acute hypersensitivity (e.g. histamine, cysteinyl leukotrienes) is an obligatory event in allergic reactions..."