New foods or fumes allergies post Covid infection?

[lenora]

I have two HEPA filters and can only run them when I'm not in the room. Fortunately we sit outside on a porch most of the day, so I can run the filters and turn then off at night.

Life sounds miserable for some of you at the moment. It's so easy for a fungus or black mold to form from a leak of any sort, especially inside the walls. Even bleach doesn't remove black mold for long. It's nasty.

If it's any help, I can say that some years are worse than others. I don't know why that would be. Interesting about black mold and the windows. My in-laws were in England and had PVC windows installed...well, it seems that everyone in southern England did. I'll avoid them. Feel better and I hope the HEPA's will help somewhat. Yours, Lenora

 

[linusbert]

I have two HEPA filters and can only run them when I'm not in the room. Fortunately we sit outside on a porch most of the day, so I can run the filters and turn then off at night.

why not same room like filters?

If it's any help, I can say that some years are worse than others. I don't know why that would be.

for me it was worse last year because of disenfactants.
but also mold spores fly more or less in air outside like any other pollen. my pollen warn app on my mobile shows those.

 

[Tsukareta]

i started also reacting to devices. not sure about my TV yet, but i got a hair dryer which triggers breathing difficulties... even for my inhalation device i actually bought to fight asthma, made it worse.
i got a LED panel , i am also reacting to that... this is maddening!!!
nobody understands this, all think you are crazy!

ok, thats where i am a expert. do never buy any VOC filter, those usually are charcoal but the filters fill the air with a sweetish fume (which vanishes in seconds when you open a window), thats when the filter is fresh and good... when its not good anymore, it smells like road and parfum .. all the stuff it filtered out at once. sometimes you get a brand new device and its already smelling like that.

if you buy a air filter, buy one which only has a HEPA filter. but also then most use cheap materials... one device from philips also gave me the cough and asthma thing.
what i am using right now is a IQair pro health 250.
haha, mine has a charcoal filter like i said not to buy, but i feel its better in my device, though i often have the filter removed (can do that easy - but i still get the sweetish fume from the filter in the room). i am still experimenting as i am living on the road.
hepa does only particles like fine dust, but not fumes.

there are exceptions with VOC filters, dyson has a special aluminium(i believe) grid which attracts and smashes some formaldehyd in lesser harmful substances.
(i think the dyson also was well tolerated back then even with the voc filter. so for me dyson and iqair are the devices to go, but iqair is even better)

but in general, get a really good device, cheap is bad for health, like almost ever.
and if you still get a device with charcoal voc filter, make sure the VOC filter is BEFORE the HEPA. so the hepa filter must be the last layer where air gets through. so it filters fine dust from the charchoal filter.

here is how a iqair healthpro 250 and 150 is build up, you can easily remove any of those 3 filters, you got a prefilter bottom, the ventilaor, the black gas/voc filter and on top the hepa filter. you can just remove the gas filter and let it run without it, place it in back later as you wish.
also if you buy a 150 instead of 250 which is basically same device as 250 but without the voc filter. you can later buy a v5 cell voc filter for upgrade if someone wishes too.
View attachment 51481

yeah sounds like you went down this path a lot. At first I thought I could solve most of my new issues just by 'buying stuff', especially air purifiers with a large amount of carbon, but as I said with one purifier I developed a reaction, probably due to adhesives used to make the filters ? Looked for one that was meant to be safe for people with MCS and it was a choice between AirDoctor and BlueAir 605, because in the UK couldn't get the right version of another product that was half the price and seemed good. read reviews carefully and some people said the AirDoctor had a plasticky smell for them. Tried BlueAir 605 and it smelled sweetly just like you said, this surprised me, and I worried that it might have been putting out tonnes of fine carbon dust into the air, and if I developed a sensitivity to that I was screwed, so I stopped using it. Access to fresh air is the easiest solution for me, but I think my MCS level varies over time, and I have to figure out the factors, i'm sure its associated with brain inflammation for one thing. Theres several possibly separate factors involved, symptoms on exposure, smell sensitivity level, and whether or not it can spread to new things, in the past month ( until saturday ) it seemed it could not spread to new things. I actually got a new monitor for use outside / in my tent ( very cheap one under 100 GBP ) and so far its been fine, and my old MSIGX740 laptop which i've had since 2010 wasn't an issue when I was still indoors, even after reacting to other electronics. So I guess there is hope ? but at the same time I somewhat hate this life i've been reduced to.

 

[lenora]

I think I'm highly allergic to our bed (not my husband!!). For some reason running the HEPA in the bedroom seems to set off my symptoms. If I run it in the daytime it removes the problem. I do keep the bedding very clean, have special mattress covers and still have them.

I quite agree that each year brings different pollen, dust, etc., so we never know for sure, they aren't static.

Allergies do tend to get worse with age (at least certain ones). As most people know, they can start at any point in life and even returning to the place where you didn't have them isn't the answer. Yes, usually you don't have them (anywhere if you move) for 2 years, but after that....there they are again. Pests. Yours, Lenora

 

[linusbert]

have you tried to switch material? i have the theory it could be the cotton or dyes or something else.

you could be allergic to the HEPA itself. those also are in different materials.

 

[Tsukareta]

I think my MCS and a bunch of other new symptoms in the past few years is due to mycotoxins, probably coming from the environment ( my house is pretty bad apparently but I don't know the exact sources of it ), but something weakened my system to allow the mycotoxins to start to build up, this probably happened in 2020 when I lived in a different environment. Thats the best explanation I can find for why I didn't become ill despite living in a place with a high level of mold. When my brain is in a particularly bad condition my MCS flares up and I develop reactions to new things, I think this probably involves viral reactivation and neuroinflammation, and at these times my BBB is compromised more than usual. I tested with GABA a couple of weeks ago and had a mild to moderate sensitivity, it took about 1000mg to clearly feel something, whereas yesterday I only took about 350mg and strongly felt the difference, and that was a few days after my MCS suddenly flared up due to changes in my lifestyle and activity choices / heavy PEM.

 

[linusbert]

I tested with GABA a couple of weeks ago and had a mild to moderate sensitivity, it took about 1000mg to clearly feel something, whereas yesterday I only took about 350mg and strongly felt the difference, and that was a few days after my MCS suddenly flared up due to changes in my lifestyle and activity choices / heavy PEM.

can you explain this, i did not understand it.
you took 1000mg of gaba and your potential to get new allergies reduced? but 350mg did not have that effect?
i noticed that if i take active b vitamins and some other supplements my asthma and allergies and also to new things, worsens insanely.

 

[Tsukareta]

Not exactly, its a test for the permeability of the BBB, its a neurotransmitter but traditionally scientists have said that it can't pass the barrier to reach the brain and affect it, so if you take enough of it and it causes a relaxing or drowsy / anti-anxiety effect then the barrier isn't working normally, someone on reddit suggested that MCS is ( solely ? ) caused by the presence of this factor ( others suggest is solely due to a deficit in glutathione / total toxic load ). I thought the former theory was interesting because its so simple, and I had heard already of this 'test' so I tried it, GABA is actually a banned substance in the UK but its not illegal to import it. The caps at 750mg and at first I tried half or a 1/3 and didn't see much change, so i took the whole one and saw a mild to moderate but noticeable change. Tried 2 or 3 weeks later after a big crash that was caused by my own reckless unwise behaviour, and I was highly sensitive to even half a capsule.

Fast forward to now and I believe that most likely all my new symptoms since 2020 including my MCS and food issues ( including developing allergy like reactions not just intolerance ), is highly likely to be due to Candida infection... which is something doctors should have picked up on, but I don't actually have any of the outward indications like a whitened tongue, the primary symptom is stomach gas and bloating and discomfort when I eat a lot of carbs, at which time I become way more tired, but theres been times in recent months where i've eaten lots of carbs and this didn't occur. This started happening in autumn / winter of 2020 and I had no idea what might have been causing it because it had never happened before in my ME/CFS. I took antibiotics for a throat infection around january / feb of 2020 but there were many other factors around that time.

 

[linusbert]

Fast forward to now and I believe that most likely all my new symptoms since 2020 including my MCS and food issues ( including developing allergy like reactions not just intolerance ), is highly likely to be due to Candida infection... which is something doctors should have picked up on, but I don't actually have any of the outward indications like a whitened tongue, the primary symptom is stomach gas and bloating and discomfort when I eat a lot of carbs, at which time I become way more tired, but theres been times in recent months where i've eaten lots of carbs and this didn't occur. This started happening in autumn / winter of 2020 and I had no idea what might have been causing it because it had never happened before in my ME/CFS. I took antibiotics for a throat infection around january / feb of 2020 but there were many other factors around that time.

i dont know about candida.
this looks like some kind of pre diabetic / insulin resistence thing. in that case b1 / thiamin and everything in that pathway might help. b1 might need potassium and phosphorus. read about thiamine and cofactors.
thiamin is also involved in gastrointestinal issues.
you can also try allicin , get some allimax/allisure , that might clean your candida if there was any.

 

[Tsukareta]

I initially had some mild to moderate herx type reactions to candida treatment protocol, which cleared up after 5 to 7 days and i'm able to take full dosage of the typical stuff like "Now Foods Candida Support", Swan Berberine 400mg etc. Got some benefit in terms of energy from this approach but it didn't cure my sore muscles, crashing and MCS / leaky gut flare ups after physiotherapy levels of exertion etc, so either the candida is more stubborn and entrenched than I thought, or its level wasn't very high ( my tongue was never white ).

Now looking into SIBO, I have a cool lab test for Leaky Gut that tests for a bunch of stuff including Candida, but they want it mailed via FedEx in the next city rather than UPS in my town. Lots of organization effort and i'd have to get someone else to take it to FedEX for me on a specific day, so I decided not to perform the test yet. I'm going to make my own air purifier machine because the ones on the market are not great for absorbing VOCs / mycotoxins unless you pay a lot of money to import an IQAir or similar. Painting a laminate floor with SafeSeal seems to have helped solve a chemical sensitivity issue I had in a certain room after we installed that floor 2 years ago, but since the mold is so bad in my house in general, I need good filtering and sealed up doors to make the room livable, then I can perhaps move out of my tent.

 

[linusbert]

I initially had some mild to moderate herx type reactions to candida treatment protocol, which cleared up after 5 to 7 days and i'm able to take full dosage of the typical stuff like "Now Foods Candida Support", Swan Berberine 400mg etc. Got some benefit in terms of energy from this approach but it didn't cure my sore muscles, crashing and MCS / leaky gut flare ups after physiotherapy levels of exertion etc, so either the candida is more stubborn and entrenched than I thought, or its level wasn't very high ( my tongue was never white ).

Now looking into SIBO, I have a cool lab test for Leaky Gut that tests for a bunch of stuff including Candida, but they want it mailed via FedEx in the next city rather than UPS in my town. Lots of organization effort and i'd have to get someone else to take it to FedEX for me on a specific day, so I decided not to perform the test yet. I'm going to make my own air purifier machine because the ones on the market are not great for absorbing VOCs / mycotoxins unless you pay a lot of money to import an IQAir or similar. Painting a laminate floor with SafeSeal seems to have helped solve a chemical sensitivity issue I had in a certain room after we installed that floor 2 years ago, but since the mold is so bad in my house in general, I need good filtering and sealed up doors to make the room livable, then I can perhaps move out of my tent.

i got a iqair, i never was happy with the active choal voc filters. seam to not work and introduce a new smell into the air which might trigger something.
the pure HEPA filter from iqair is very good. it might filter the mold spores.

 

[hapl808]

i got a iqair, i never was happy with the active choal voc filters. seam to not work and introduce a new smell into the air which might trigger something.
the pure HEPA filter from iqair is very good. it might filter the mold spores.

Yep, when my sensitivities were at their worst, the IQAir didn't really help me any more than other purifiers, and if anything the huge active charcoal filters seem to make my coughing worse.

In the end, I'm not sure if what we're reacting to can easily be filtered at all.

 

[linusbert]

Yep, when my sensitivities were at their worst, the IQAir didn't really help me any more than other purifiers, and if anything the huge active charcoal filters seem to make my coughing worse.

In the end, I'm not sure if what we're reacting to can easily be filtered at all.

i know for sure that not only particles trigger my asthma problem but also certain smells which do not get filtered by the iqair.

for pollen or real dust its easy, if they are the problem, i turn on my iqair and the problem is gone in 5minutes.
for cleaning detergents and other things its not working at all.
the filter filteres out the fine PMx particles from car exhaust... but it does not filter out the fumes (which it actually should but somehow doesnt) and also not elements like carbonmonoxid and other gases.
but i mean better than nothing, at least getting rid of one dangerous PM particles.

i have the feeling that either the active choal filter is giving up dust. so when its the last filter in the fiilter chain you blow the choal dust in the air. in some iqair models the choal filter is in the middle and the last filter is the HEPA filter. that makes me tolerate it much better. IQair is the only device i know which allows for this setup.
but i still feel better if i do not use the choal filter at all.
this problem with choal filters isnt exclusive to cfs/mcs sufferers. i've seen reports in the internet from "casuals" which also notice the fume generated from choal filters and they say it makes them fill unwell or nausea.

what i also noticed, the fume from choal filters disappears within minutes of opening a window.

i had 2 iqairs , one of the big machines with tubular active choal filters in the end, that didnt work at all for me. even my non-cfs girl friend at that time reported bad fume and feeling unwell from it. i sent it back.
then i got one of those iqair healthpro 250s where you can switch order of filters and did as described above, tolerated much better, but still not perfect.

dyson has a tower filter which uses a element to break up formaldehyde into smaller undangerous compounds. idk if that works.
but dyson also has the active choal filter at last and its combined with the HEPA filter, so its all or nothing. (except the formaldehyde filter, its something different. a metallic grid or something)

 

[triffid113]

I don't have MCS but do have a lot of allergies. After covid, my mild wheat allergy got way worse and most of my vitamins irritate me. I have discovered in the past that my wheat allergies flares due to low zinc. Zinc is used up by covif and btw, :loss of taste or smell" is a symptom of zinc shortage. Trouble is, you need zinc to make HCL and you need HCL to digest zinc. So it's hard to bring up zinc.levels...especially if it irritates your gut. But this is a long cascade because w/o enough zinc you don't have enough HCL which is required to digest way more than zinc and proteins - it is HCL hitting the small intestine that stimulates release of pancreatic enzymes and bile.. So lots of minerals and things will not be digested. Good luck with that - idk how to raise zinc levels w/o enduring stack issues.

So. Idk about new allergies, but definitely new sensitivities...to most of my supplements, even mild ones. And seems like to all grains, not just wheat. I 3xpec5 zinc will fix it but I'm looking for a more stomach friendly form.

I just read hypertension and fatigue after covid can be cured with 1.6g arginine 2x/ day and Vitamin C for 28 days. Apparently arginine is used up by the immune system. I don't recall how much C needed because I take 2g/day anyway and am sure that's enough. Idk what else this might fix....oh, the immune system also uses glutamine. Hm... wonder if that is what causes the gut sensitivity. Couldn't hurt to supplement glutamine also.

 

[triffid113]

The gut is a heavy user of glutamine. I do believe I will try that. Can't hurt.

 

[Katy131]

I have discovered in the past that my wheat allergies flares due to low zinc. Zinc is used up by covif and btw, :loss of taste or smell" is a symptom of zinc shortage. Trouble is, you need zinc to make HCL and you need HCL to digest zinc. So it's hard to bring up zinc.levels...especially if it irritates your gut. But this is a long cascade because w/o enough zinc you don't have enough HCL which is required to digest way more than zinc and proteins - it is HCL hitting the small intestine that stimulates release of pancreatic enzymes and bile

Thanks for this Interesting about the Zinc and HCL. I didn't lose my taste and smell during my Covid infection and perhaps this was because I take a Zinc supplement (in my multivit) and was also taking a HCL supplement with every meal at the time. I do know from recent blood tests that my plasma zinc levels are right in the middle of the range so looks good, but of course whether it is actually getting into the cells is another story. My doctor recently suggested I start taking Quercetin (to calm down my sensitivities generally), which is an ionophore and shunts zinc into cells so that will also be helping that side of things.

I just read hypertension and fatigue after covid can be cured with 1.6g arginine 2x/ day and Vitamin C for 28 days. Apparently arginine is used up by the immune system. I don't recall how much C needed because I take 2g/day anyway and am sure that's enough. Idk what else this might fix....oh, the immune system also uses glutamine. Hm... wonder if that is what causes the gut sensitivity.

I take Vitamin C to bowel tolerance always (currently about 3g a day but can go up to much much more if I'm fighting an infection), but the arginine is an interesting one. I'll look into that. Thanks

 

[linusbert]

:loss of taste or smell"

thats what happend me. good to know its due to zink. btw @vision blue do you read this? also this can explain your loss of hair.

did you try zink-histidine as complex? histidine is transport protein for zink, so you need much lower dose and also should be tolerated much better.
but careful, its a chemical bond between zink+histidine you are looking for. NOT like many sell some zink form combined with l-histidine in the same tablet. many sell "zink histidine" and then you get zinkgulconate and l-histidine in one capsule. thats not what you want. you want the bonded molecule.

in germany one of the few products is curazink , https://www.curazink.de/
they use Zink-Histidin-Dihydrat.

and they advice to use it during a meal, so its easier for the stomach.

 

[triffid113]

in germany one of the few products is curazink , https://www.curazink.de/
they use Zink-Histidin-Dihydrat.

Thank You! I am currently trying zinc carnosine, but when that's gone I would be happy to try this!

 

[triffid113]

whether it is actually getting into the cells is another story. My doctor recently suggested I start taking Quercetin (to calm down my sensitivities generally), which is an ionophore and shunts zinc into cells so that will also be helping that side of things.

Thanks for this info on quercetin - zinc interaction!

 

[Violeta]

The flipping of the immune system from Th1 to Th2 used to be talked about a lot, but I don't see it mentioned anymore. Something going wrong with the immune system would/could cause one to be hyperallergic to foods.

I know that happened to me, but a long time ago.

There is a lot of information about it on the web; I would try to explain it but that's not easy to do and I run out of energy so quickly.

Just a thought.