Wishes Do Come True???
If I had a Genie in a bottle ( cue Christina Aquilera LOL!) my 1st wish would be a cure for my allergies. If that wasn’t possible (we all learned in Aladdin that Genies can’t do EVERYTHING), then I’d wish for a magic pill that would cure ALL the symptoms (even the ones no one understands). And if even that wasn’t possible, then I’d wish simply for some understanding. Being able to put the feelings into words. Being able to have some “proof” of my invisible agony. Being able to say to someone - read this, this is what I feel like. Having someone else’s words when my own fail me.
The last wish just might be coming true. Maybe.
This morning I got an email from WebMD, an allergy newsletter. I usually delete these because honestly there’s nothing new and I have scoured almost every inch of the internet looking for info about allergies causing emotional type symptoms and found nothing, but today I had a few minutes and had nothing else to do so I clicked it. It was a slide show titled “Are your allergies out of control?” I clicked through the slides, nothing new. Until the last slide. The 10th sign that your allergies might be out of control - depression. whoa. Someone actually listed that??? WOW. The slide mentioned a study being done by National Institute of Mental Health so I did some googling and found this:
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00770068
It’s all about the study - looks VERY interesting. They aren’t looking for participants anymore, but it has the name of the guy in charge and I’m going to figure out how to contact him - I’m certainly willing to do whatever to help them and at the very least he could tell me when the findings will be published.
From the description of the study:
Allergies, which also peak in the spring and fall, have been linked to depression. Allergic reactions release cytokines, which are proteins that mediate the immune system response when a foreign substance enters the body. Previous studies have found both that an increase in cytokines in otherwise healthy individuals causes depressive symptoms and that cytokines cause the chemical tryptophan (TRP) to switch from producing serotonin, a neurotransmitter associated with feelings of well-being, to producing kynurenine (KYN), a potentially toxic chemical. To determine whether and to what extent allergies are linked to depression, this study will compare depression levels of participants with and without allergies before and during peak times for seasonal allergies. Results from this study may be used in further research to examine the effects of allergy prevention on depression.
WOW! The bold sentence especially hits home. I’m absolutely convinced that what I experience in terms of emotional symptoms are caused by some chemical reaction in my body - when I get the allergies under control, or it rains, or I stay in all day the emotional stuff vanishes. That’s what makes me think it’s not “true” depression. You can’t manipulate depression like that.
So of course the next thing I googled was “cytokines”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine - this is more technical than I could handle this afternoon or even this evening so I’m putting off reading it until later, but it’s there.
Finally I found another article linking allergies and suicide.*
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/43/24/11.1.full
Here they were talking about experiments done on rats and mice, but the findings hit home:
Also interesting is their discovery that although induced allergy alone does not significantly increase aggression, it does provoke increased aggressive behavior if the animal is subjected to a stressful condition. In other words, the interaction between the environment and the physiological reaction to allergens can lead to observable behavioral changes, which reflect increased anxiety, isolation, and aggression, in both rats and mice.
When the allergies get bad stress makes it worse. When I get stressed, and even little things will set me off, I’m WAY more aggressive than I am when I’m not dealing with allergies. And, this is consistent with the other emotional symptoms as being an allergy issue rather than say an anger management issue. When I feel stressed over things I shouldn’t be I treat the allergies and generally (unless it’s during the peak and there’s nothing that will help) it makes those symptoms better.
I’m SOOOOO excited to find these articles! I hope that soon more will be understood and that maybe my particular allergy symptoms won’t be so hard to deal with and hopefully with the research and the validation that this happens they will develop drugs to treat it! :-)
*BTW, I have never been what I would call “suicidal” although the thoughts have definitely been there when things get really bad, but I have never thought about acting on the thoughts, even when things get bad there is a glimmer of sanity, part of me knows that it won’t last forever and I need to just hold and get through and in a few days (or weeks) things will be much better). I have been dealing with this for so long I know these feelings aren’t “real” and try not to act on anything that churns up when I’m in an allergy state.
