What foods should not be eaten with allergic rhinitis

In fact, there is no uniform taboo list suitable for all patients. The core principle is to avoid foods that are clearly positive in your personal allergen test. During an acute attack, it is enough to avoid highly irritating and high-histamine foods. There is no need to follow the general list on the Internet.

I am an old rhinitis patient with a history of 6 years. When I first got sick, I read a lot of popular science saying that you should not eat seafood or touch cold things with rhinitis. I suppressed it for a whole year and did not dare to touch shrimp. In summer, I only dared to take a few sips of iced milk tea at room temperature. As a result, I still got sick when the season changed, and my head hurt from sneezing. Later, I went to the allergist department to do a full set of allergen tests. It was a joke. I was not allergic to seafood at all. Instead, the egg yolks I ate every day were weakly positive. After trying to replace the boiled eggs for breakfast with egg whites, the frequency of attacks that year was reduced by almost half.

Some people may want to ask, if I checked and found no food allergens, can I just eat it as I please? Neither. Last month, when the season changed at the end of spring, I had some symptoms of rhinitis. My friend asked me to eat spicy butter hot pot. I thought that I didn't have any food allergies, so I ate it. I also paired it with half a dozen cold beers. I got seriously ill when I got home that day. I only sneezed twice occasionally. That night, my nasal mucosa was swollen and I was completely breathless. I usually sprayed it with budesonide, which worked well, but it had no effect. I went to the emergency room at two in the morning and was prescribed oral antihistamines before I recovered. Later, the doctor said that such spicy food and ice drinks are strong irritants in themselves. Even if you are not allergic to them, they will further dilate the blood vessels of the already congested and edematous nasal mucosa, which will directly overflow the inflammatory reaction and naturally make the symptoms twice as severe.

By the way, there is also the issue of "fatting" that is very noisy now. I specifically asked different doctors. In Western medicine, there is actually no concept of fatting. As long as you don't feel uncomfortable after eating it and there are no problems with allergens, you can eat it normally. Traditional Chinese medicine will recommend that you try to avoid touching warm foods such as mutton and leeks during the attack period. I tried it myself once when I was having an attack last year. I was craving for a roasted leg of lamb. After eating it, my nasal congestion got worse for most of the day. Then I took the initiative to avoid it when it happened again. This kind of thing doesn’t need to be hard-pressed. Which one is right? You can eat when you feel comfortable, and avoid when you feel uncomfortable. No matter what the standard is, it works.

Another type of minefield that is easily overlooked is foods with high histamine content, such as heavy cheeses that have been fermented for a long time, salted fish and pickles that have been pickled for more than half a month, leftovers that have been stored for two or three days, and underripe pineapples and kiwis. Even if you are not allergic to these, eating them during an attack is equivalent to "adding firewood" to the allergic reaction. I have been in trouble before. When my rhinitis was about to recover, I was greedy and tasted half a piece of blue cheese brought by a friend. On the same day, I started sneezing again and again. It took almost a week for it to completely recover.

The biggest feeling I have learned over the years is, don’t follow other people’s list of taboos. Some people get sick when they touch something cold, and some people are fine eating popsicles every day in summer. Find out your own allergens first. Write down what you usually eat when your rhinitis suddenly worsens, and avoid it next time. It is more reliable than any general guide.