Rant: Allergies, They’re not a Joke!

Hi and Welcome to the A & J PEI Treasures E Jean Simpson Author Blog Post and Podcast. I’m your host, Jean coming to you from the beautiful Province of Prince Edward Island, Canada!! The blog post and podcast is an opinion piece and only reflects this author’s opinion and not that of any other entity. I hold no designations in politics, economics or medicine. I am retired from the mental health field and I am a humanitarian and speak from that viewpoint only. Whether you agree or not, at least I hope it makes you think. This week, I explore the world of allergies. If you want to find out more, then stay tuned…!

Often people don’t give a second thought to allergies. If you have an allergy, usually people sympathize. Sometimes, though, people act like jerks and want to prove it isn’t an allergy. Here is where life gets complicated. In their attempt to disprove it, they often can injure or even kill innocent parties. It’s not funny and it’s not a laughing matter. In Canada alone, 7% of people suffer from food allergies, https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canad.... This does not count environmental sensitivities https://www.womenshealthmatters.ca/he... though some count it as an environmental sensitivity. It is hard to find actual hard stats on the people with allergies that suffer from exposure, however, I did find one article that estimates that 10% of people are allergic to marijuana https://loudcloudhealth.com/resources.... It means I also avoid CBD oil and anything to do with hemp. Mostly I’m not sure exactly what causes the reaction or which components and I don’t want to play to find out with the trial and error method. Any exposure is enough to do it. Then when coupled with other allergens, I am one of the people who will suffer from asthma. I’ve now been sick for a few weeks. I know it is allergen related. I know that it is happening. I sometimes know to expect it…seems any time around here that I smell like a smoke smell, I get sick. The skunk smell, I’m sick with lots of symptoms. If you still have to guess, I am allergic to some chemicals as well as some foods. I’ve had to leave at least one job due to my allergy. Had no idea what it was, no one else was affected, but I was sick and getting sicker. I literally had to leave. Actually liked the job. Asthma Canada https://asthma.ca/wp-content/uploads/... talks about asthma which is not allergies, but a relative to it and the outcome from some exposures. For those who had asthma, allergies can trigger an asthma attack.

So, https://www.asthmaandallergycenter.co... states that approximately 20% of Americans are afflicted by allergy related diseases. I have no reason to question that it is likely similar in Canada and am uncertain as to whether it is underreported as most people just try to avoid something that makes them sick and don’t get a diagnosis. It’s logical enough. It seems that food allergies get the most attention. However, people don’t seem to understand that environmental allergies such as allergies to cosmetics, chemicals, or marijuana are not less serious. At least not to the sufferer. Lest you find it funny that someone can have a serious reaction to marijuana, https://www.aaaai.org/Tools-for-the-P... states, “Anaphylaxis has also been reported. This most commonly occurs with hempseed ingestion.” So, in my opinion as an allergy sufferer, remember I’m not a doctor, trying to prove an allergy is not true could have deadly consequences to the person with the allergy.

As Rosemary Shahan has said “People with asthma or allergies will be at particular risk of breathing in substances that are a threat to their health.” I do not take this to mean that we do it on purpose or that’s all we do. It is just part of the air we breathe. We are unable to filter it out. No one can filter it out, just some people are made sick by certain things while others are not. I don’t ask for it. I don’t encourage it and I can’t be near it. It isn’t something I enjoy. The illness does not get better over time and repeated exposures do not make it go away. You aren’t going to make it better by exposure. It just makes it worse. That’s how we know it is an allergy. An article from healthfully.com https://healthfully.com/the-effects-o... points out that people with lung disease (I had childhood asthma and had not had an asthma attack in years until not long ago) can be made worse, have serious asthma attacks and can be life threatening.

I remember, a fairly long time ago now, I worked at a place. I didn’t know it at the time, but someone had a serious bee allergy. Now this wasn’t something that I was aware of. However, one day, I opened the door to look for the office cat and there they both were at the door at the same time. I opened the door and thought nothing of it. Apparently the cat was chasing a bee. The person got in the door. I heard commotion, but thought nothing much of it. It was a busy building. Later heard somewhere that the person was supposed to be carrying their epi-pen but left it in their drawer. I guess the commotion was to get them away from the bees and to the epi-pen. Though I think they were wasps which is a different creature, but often they have the same effect and tend to sting faster than bees. Meanwhile, the cat and the bee followed me down the hall which I didn’t notice until later. As an aside, I finally noticed the bee…got a paper cup and captured it and let it out the window. The fellow survived the exposure. It might have been better that I didn’t know as I made a better decoy for the bee and cat which ultimately got stuff out of the way. Not a bad job. I got to look after a cat, go for a walk with a bee and potentially saved someone from dying of anaphylaxis. Of course, I did a lot of other jobs too, but I liked the sound of the previous sentence. So, if nothing else, this story shows you exactly how serious allergies are and not knowing about it can be dangerous. It also says that when you have a serious verified allergy, it’s always best to have something near. For mine, I always have antihistamines on hand. I need to make sure to keep one in my purse again.

The food allergies that we hear most about are peanut ones. They are also very dangerous and people have died from having eaten some. Some have been rushed to hospital. Apparently someone I worked with went out with some co-workers…didn’t pay attention and had an exposure to peanuts in a sauce or something. Spent time in hospital. Didn’t kill them, but didn’t do them any real good either. It was fodder for office talk about the dangers of food allergies. Time in hospital is considered lucky in these cases. Death could easily have been the outcome. Keep this in mind when you think it’s funny to play with allergies.

Jeremy Rifkin is credited with saying, “The American public is not aware that there might be potential allergenic and toxic reactions. With regular food, at least people know which foods they have an allergy to.” So, it seems that food allergies have become part of mainstream conversations and are more in the public awareness than the other forms of allergies. Though I think ‘hay fever’ and stuffy runny nose commercials are part of the mainstream on commercials for antihistamines. This shows the better cases. We obviously still know relatively little of allergies especially that they can become quite serious. They still get used as joke answers to things such as “I'm allergic to attitude.” Attributed to Megan Boone. Though I doubt that there are very many teachers who have not had that thought when dealing with teens.

As Steph McGovern is credited with saying, “Given how dangerous it is for someone to consume something they are allergic to, you would think that companies would just make sure they print labels which have the allergy information on.” One would think that this would be simple, but it is somewhat complex as evidenced by recalls happening often in the food industry. I’ve been victim to one of those. Ate the item for supper, found the warning just after. I can confirm there was wheat in said product and I suffered for it. With my wheat allergy, I have to read every package that I consume. I watch for anything that is wheat or wheat derivative and some of the jargon can be confusing. My rule of thumb is, if in doubt leave it out. Of course, as I am reading, I can also pick up whether there is anything else of concern. Canada does have some regulations with regard to food allergies https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canad.... There are other related pages along with this one on the Government of Canada website that tells you what things to look out for when you have allergies. They do not include Marijuana and its derivatives in their food allergy list. However, they are kind enough to provide a bunch of potential bad effects of the substance on their webpage. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canad....

My advice, not as a retired psychologist, but as an allergy sufferer is that it is terrible to expose people to a substance that makes them sick, whether it be perfume, wheat, milk, marijuana, hemp, CBD oil or anything else. It’s fine if you feel the need to use it. It’s not my business…you know until it is coming in my window or attacking me in my home or I can’t safely walk on my street. Then I tend to be a little less kindly about it. At the very least, educate yourself enough that you aren’t doing harm to someone who did no harm to you. I leave you with this one last article, https://www.allergicliving.com/2022/0... which tells of a few instances where the jokes about allergies turned fatal. This centers on food allergies…at least I hope that the person doing the action didn’t know they could kill the person. I can attest to the fact that both food and environmental allergies are no laughing matter. Whether you agree or not, I hope it will make you think!

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