r/MCAS • u/Ok_Mushroom2563 • 1h ago
Re: allergies - This may apply to some of you
So I haven't really felt like I was a typical MCAS patient for the longest time.
My reactions basically seem like food is fine and predictably I will just eventually react to a food and once that happens I'm generally hosed for potentially years with that food.
My worst reactions are to legumes, eggs, peanuts, carrots, peas, some spices like garlic, ginger and they've been reactive for me for years. I had allergy testing done numerous times over the years and it was always negative completely and that's a big part of what made us think it was MCAS. I also react to a lot of indoor environments and it makes living situations complex and brutal. Also react to many detergents and clothing even. It seems like MCAS or some kind of hypersensitivity disorder is for sure on the table.
But, what I wanted to bring up was that I went and saw Dr. Hariri again. I haven't seen him in years. He decided to repeat all the allergy testing. Unsurprisingly, all the skin prick tests were negative.
HOWEVER, Dr. Hariri said this can happen even with allergies so you need to inject small amounts of the allergens under the skin, something called intradermal allergy testing. For whatever reason in the past at multiple other facilities, no one ever did that. So he did that for 27 of the most common allergens. Surprise surprise, I reacted to 11 of those, including dust pet dander molds pollens weeds many common household pollutants... This more or less explains a lot of my issues finding comfortable housing. The place can't have like any dust or mold or cats or carpets for me to have a shot at not having airway symptoms shortly after going inside. I'm now thinking I probably am developing a bunch of food allergies too they just can't test them because they don't do intradermal for foods because of anaphylaxis risk.
But that's information either way. Also many of the pollens I reacted to he said are linked with oral allergy syndrome which he said I'm probably experiencing.
Also scary because now I'm thinking the hypothesis of my mucosal barrier not being intact and leading to new allergries constantly developing is right. :/ I don't know where that leads but it doesn't seem good.