Echinacea, ME and Allergies

[Aerowallah]

If the majority of ME sufferers have pre-morbid allergies, including seasonal inhalant allergies...

...and it is common for the seasonal inhalant allergies to disappear, sometimes for years, with the onset of ME...

What's going on?

Is that just an energy steal from other metabolic functions to mount a BIG immune response to the viral trigger or pathogen, an energy steal that cancels out the seasonal immune response to routine allergens???

I just read echinacea, which I've avoided with ME, is adaptogenic, and can also modulate an overactive immune response.

I have done a lot of healing from ME, but when ragweed season kicks in, allergy symptoms ramp for a few days, then shut down along with my energy--just like a mini repeat performance of what happened to me during the first onset of ME. My seasonal allergies disappeared for years, only to come back after (presumably) some repair and rebalancing. I suspect some mild form of MCAS is also in the background.

Has anyone else had this relationship with on / off allergies and ME / fatigue flares? The general public seems to suffer from something they call allergy fatigue, but their allergy symptoms don't diappear with it as mine do.

Has anyone had success with Echinacea treating allergies and ME flares? Its early days, but it seems to help me smooth out these ups and downs of energy, and allergic sypmtoms.

 

[Wishful]

If the majority of ME sufferers have pre-morbid allergies,

I've never heard that being true. Is there any data showing that PWME are more likely to have allergies than PWithoutME?

I have two airborne allergies, and haven't noticed any correlation with my ME. One of those allergies started around 15 years after developing ME.

 

[Aerowallah]

This one goes way back!

https://www.jacionline.org/article/0091-6749(88)90933-5/pdf

 

[Wishful]

The study was lacking in the criteria of ME subjects, so their study group might have included a lot of 'chronic complainers'. I don't have much faith in the reliability of scratch tests either; last I heard they were around 50% reliable, therefore kind of meaningless.

Since ME involves the immune systems, I think it's quite likely that there will be some correlation with ME responses and development (frequent/chronic triggering of immune cells by allergens), but I doubt that it's a very strong correlation.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

What's going on?

I was seriously allergic as a child....

as an adult, I exhibit almost no normal evidence of those allergies: hay fever, rashes, etc.

Its not real, however. If I were to decide to itch my tongue, for instance, it would almost not ever stop.......