6 Weird Things You Never Knew About Spring Allergies

6 Weird Things You Never Knew About Spring Allergies

Video Transcript

MONICA LAWRENCE: You're probably familiar with allergies to dust, pollen, and pets. But what about ladybugs, marijuana, and thunderstorms? Here are six weird things you never knew could give you allergies.

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Cockroaches. So cockroaches are a common indoor pest. You can be allergic to the saliva or the feces of the cockroach or from body parts that the cockroaches shed. If you want to eliminate cockroaches from your home, you can work with a pest control company. To treat the symptoms, you can take oral medications, nasal sprays, or get allergy shots. Gross fact-- the skin test regionally used to check for cockroach allergy is made from crushed whole cockroach bodies. Yuck.

Ladybugs. Even though they're cute, they're actually a species of beetle, and they're becoming a much more common cause of indoor infestations, especially in the southeastern United States. You can be allergic to the ladybug blood-- which is hemolymph-- that they release when they're agitated or to ladybug bites. You can visit an allergist to have skin or blood testing to see if you're allergic to ladybugs. If you do see a ladybug outside, run away. Just kidding. Don't agitate them by crushing them, stepping on them, or sweeping them, because that will cause them to release a noxious odor. What you actually want to do is vacuum them up. Just make sure that you empty that vacuum canister regularly.

Black mold. Black mold is actually a term for a lot of different species of molds that can be dark-green or black in appearance, including the famous stachybotrys mold. You can be allergic to mold and have symptoms like nasal congestion, runny nose, or cough when you're exposed to mold. If you are allergic to mold, the best thing to do is just get rid of the mold. Either have a mold expert visit your home to help with mold remediation, or you can do simple things like bleach solutions to kill the molds.

Marijuana. Marijuana allergy is becoming much more increasingly recognized, especially with workers in the marijuana industry. The biggest exposures are from those that are around the pollinating plants when they release their pollen into the air. But you can also get symptoms from inhaling, smoking, or touching the cannabis plant. Symptoms are just like that of regular allergies, so runny nose, itchy, watery eyes, sneezing. And you can have respiratory symptoms like wheezing and cough. So the diagnosis would be made by talking to an allergist who would take a careful history and do an examination. The only real treatment is to avoid cannabis since allergy shots aren't quite available for cannabis yet.

Thunderstorms. Thunderstorm-triggered asthma is a really rare phenomenon. It occurs when the grass pollen particles that are in the air are taken up into the inflow tract of the thunderstorm, broken up into smaller particles, and then pushed out everywhere. In people who are already allergic to the grass pollen, this can lead to a big asthma attack. Even people who have never been diagnosed with asthma before can be susceptible to thunderstorm asthma. It can also make your allergy symptoms worse, so things like itchy eyes, runny nose, or nasal congestion. The most important thing you can do to prevent symptoms of thunderstorm asthma is check the weather. So if you know that there's a thunderstorm coming and you're allergic to grass pollen, then just stay inside.

Stress. So there are some studies that show that stress can actually make your spring allergy and asthma symptoms worse. The mechanism for this is thought to be that the stress hormones skew your immune system's response towards more of an allergic response. If you find out that that's the case, then the best thing to do is try to reduce those stress levels. Yoga, meditation, mindfulness, and biofeedback are all great things to try.

Keep your runny nose, itchy eyes, and sniffles in check by keeping these enemies in mind during the allergy season.