What are you doing for Canadians who suffer Specific Allergies?

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. I am a humanitarian and speak from that viewpoint only. Whether you agree with me or not, at least I hope it makes you think. This week, I look at allergies and most specifically the one that is my worst and most scary one because I have no control over it and it is incurable. If you want to find out more, then stay tuned…!

It seems that decriminalization of cannabis/marijuana has resulted in some rare opportunities, but also some very real costs. You see, I have mentioned it before and I have looked into it from the viewpoint of trying to find a way to survive it. You see, the reason is that I have an allergy to some chemicals and one of the most serious ones for me is marijuana/cannabis. Unfortunately, there is NO cure for this allergy and according to most articles I can find, such as this one, https://www.nyallergy.com/marijuana-a... there is no cure there is only treatment of the symptoms and often that is less than helpful. The best they can suggest is avoidance. So, I ask as a citizen of Canada, what are we doing to protect those who are most vulnerable to it? What are we doing so that they aren’t sick every time they go in public and a portion of the time when they go for a simple walk in their own area and yes, even in the country! I cannot feel safe. There seems no place that will allow me to be able to reliably breathe. Even in my house, if someone passes, it can be sucked into our heating system. This is worse. I can, in the middle of the night, wake up with an asthma attack. I have to cough it out of my system and am barely able to breathe. It hurts my throat from an hour or more of coughing. So, for those who fancy that it is just a stage or that I just don’t like the smell…WRONG. How wrong…I avoid all forms of it including hemp as I get so sick. I don’t know what exactly in it triggers my allergies and the best strategy is avoidance. Then there are days of feeling sick to my stomach, fatigue that makes it tiring and next to impossible to think straight. To be honest, having had accidental exposure earlier this week and I have no idea…could be someone in a house with windows open or someone driving by, I’ve been sick. I had 4 good hours after some mishap around the end of the year resulting in accidental exposure. Then I had another accidental exposure early in January, 2023. I call it accidental because if I knew it was in the area, I would have avoided it like the plague. Each time the affects are worse and lasts with multi-exposures.

I’m so exhausted after an exposure and it doesn’t take much. For example, the after New Year one, I smelled something strange…I didn’t even hang around to try to figure out if it smelled like skunk and headed for home immediately to get away from it. It didn’t work. By the way, for those of you saying, well, don’t be silly, wear a mask, I can guarantee you it doesn’t work. I’ve been out in public and due to weakened immune system, I literally double mask out in public (one has cotton liner and denim and the other has two layer of cotton I wear simultaneously). Then I smelled the familiar smell…and yup, I was sick. I can’t move away from it fast enough not to be sick. The masks did no good. So, my experience is what I have to go by…mostly because I haven’t been able to find much back up either direction with regard to cannabis. I suspect however that the answer to why farts make it through masks has some relevance to cannabis making it through my double masking. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete... . Now that I looked up the size of the molecules of cannabis smoke, I believe that I have had the right idea about why it doesn’t work. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6086435/ . My training is not in medicine, but I think this more or less spells out the complicating factors. Some articles such as https://no-smoke.org/protecting-nonsm... agree that there are potential pitfalls to second hand smoke. The article further states, “Ventilation and other air filtration technologies cannot eliminate all the health risks caused by secondhand smoke exposure.” So, for those of us who suffer from chemically induced allergic reactions, this is not good news. So far, there is no cure for it, masks don’t protect against it and some of us are made seriously ill from exposure to it.

Science seems to bear out that the allergy can even result in anaphylactic reactions so definitely not a laughing matter. For those who are not aware, this can be deadly for those who experience it. It is best known for occurring with peanut allergies and bee allergies and one needs to carry an epipen. There is a lot of information for those who have peanut allergies and is not in the purview of this blog post, so I won’t provide information on it. This article https://aacijournal.biomedcentral.com... talks more about the cannabis allergy from the scientific viewpoint. It seems treatment falls in the area of avoidance or treat the symptoms…again no cure is known. In my case, the antihistamines that worked so well for other allergies seem to offer little relief.

So, my question to the Canadian Government is, what are you doing to help those of us who suffer and get tired of suffering in silence. I no longer keep it quiet when I’ve been made sick and I’ve started to publish it regularly on Twitter when I do. Most often I’m out of commission for a few days or I have to drag myself through whatever I absolutely feel I must do. I have no energy. I find it hard to breathe, I can take antihistamines, however I still wake in the night with an asthma attack when it is most prevalent. It’s not just uncomfortable, but I feel like I’m not going to live very old when summers hit and the smokers are out. It’s a constant battle and I have no weapons, but it feels to me like they have all the weaponry. For me, going out in public holds little charm because I know there is a chance of being exposed. I go out and I never know from one day to the next if I will be exposed. If it is local, I don’t know from one day to the next if it will be sucked into our heating system and I’ll wake in an asthma attack. I thought moving out of a big city and into a small area would get rid of the problem. I was wrong.

Of course, it isn’t just adults who suffer from the allergy. If a child with allergies or asthma is brought up in a household where Marijuana/cannabis is regularly consumed, this could have bad effects on the child. So, if your child suddenly has hard to handle asthma, then you might want to check into the possibility of an allergy. It could save their lives. There is a need for allergists to check into the family history of this in diagnosing and dealing with a child with poorly controlled asthma. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-he....

Of further interest is the fact the Government of Canada itself provides whole pages on the effects of cannabis. I sometimes wonder if anyone bothers to read it. It is quite clear that it isn’t the miracle that some think it to be. I know that many think that it helps and there are some situations where it does. There are other situations where it makes things worse. The Government of Canada page on the health effects follows. https://www.canada.ca/en/services/hea... It appears to me that they aren’t holding back on the potential issues…however they do leave out either having or developing allergies (yes, that too can happen) that could be quite detrimental to your social activity and your lifestyle. I think the article is well worth the read. Apparently it has a propensity to worsen depression and/or anxiety for some…how do you know which some…good question…you don’t with 100% certainty know until it happens. Though there are some potential sign posts to watch out for in some people. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canad.... That’s not encouraging to those who are using it longer term. I sometimes suspect that the most viewed stuff is the pro-cannabis stuff that leaves out a lot of the potential issues. You might be just fine and you might not. It might be good to have a more balanced view of things. It certainly would help those who suffer from serious allergies to it. We’re left in a no person’s land of mine fields and illnesses without an actual available cure. Avoid or mask the symptoms. A gas mask might help, but I cannot wear one 24/7 no matter the case.

As Clara Chung is quoted as saying, "Every season can be allergy season, depending on what you're allergic to." When you are allergic to cannabis (and I must add it is NOT my only allergy), then every season can be allergy season and you can never be sure that you will be safe or if it’ll be around the next corner. Sound like a Steven King horror story. Well, for those of us that suffer from the allergy, it’s pretty close to one. For me it is the worst one because it’s the hardest to manage. Others are easier because my food sensitivities, I have control over what I eat. Other allergies I have knowledge of and can avoid. This is the only one I cannot avoid and I have NO control over. The reaction is hard to treat and I end up ill for days. Whether you agree with me or not, I hope I made you think. Thanks for listening to my podcast and/or reading my blog post and thanks for your interest in A & J PEI Treasures! Keep watching because we’re always working on something. Thank you!

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