(no subject)

[mamadeb]

Report from the dermatologist.

I go to him twice a year. He checks me for moles (I've had four removed) and to see if my rosecea is responding, but mostly for my contact dermatitis. It's not that I'm allergic to any one thing, but if I don't take Zyrtec at least every other day, I get hives from, well, everything. During hay fever season, I need to take it daily.

It's gotten much better. 8 years ago, I needed a combination of Zyrtec and two Allegras daily to keep the hives managable, plus a cortisone lotion for when they didn't work. And I needed two Zyrtec when visiting my inlaws in their summer house, which is up in the mountains, just to breathe.

I'm right in the bell curve, says he. Perfectly normal.

But. *giggle*. I have discovered a differnet sensitivity. Jojoba oil. I'm serious. I've been using plain jojoba oil in my hair, because it's very long and even the stuff my oily scalp produces doesn't make it all the way down. And it does nice things for my hair.

And my hands reacted so badly to it that they kept me awake from the itching. I finally used my husband's prescription lidocaine just to ease it. It helped a LOT. I figured it had to be the jojoba because of where it itched - the space between my fingers and the upper part of my palms. Just where the hair slips through when I apply the oil and when I pull it into a pony tail or bun. What really helped was washing the jojoba oil out of my hair. My scalp felt better, too.

I told him this, and he did a search. He found ONE other case. ONE. I'm one of two people in forty years documented to be allergic to jojoba oil.

He recommended olive oil instead.

Grin.

Comments

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

I also have long straight dark hair, and I use Japanese camellia oil shampoo. And camellia oil. It is the sekrit weapon. Any large Japanese grocery store will have "Oshima Tsubaki" shampoo and "Oshima Tsubaki" camellia oil to treat your hair wit. The only thing is that since I started wearing a lot of hats and scarves, I now need to use a clarifying shampoo ever 2-3 weeks, because the oil doesn't wear out like it did when I wore my hair loose all the time.

Get a little Oshima Tsubaki, test to make sure you're not allergic, and if you're not allergic, you will be a fan for life.

[azurelunatic]

I should get more almond oil. I like the scent of that. I need to start using oil in my hair more often or something -- it's getting annoyingly frizzy, and something to weight it down a little might help if I did it more regularly.

[castiron.livejournal.com]

Ain't it great to be unusual? ;-)

(I'm now remembering somebody's [Resonant's, maybe?] Sentinel fic that started with Blair and Jim trying to find something Blair could use for hand lotion without setting off Jim's senses; olive oil turned out to do the trick.)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Much of this is eerily familiar. I've got the hives from hell that only respond to Zyrtec. And I'm allergic to jojoba oil, among other substances that don't usually trigger reactions. (I don't think I have rosacea, though, although I do flush very easily and my cheeks are definitely very red at times.)

The thought of anyone else out there having an immune system like mine is kind of terrifying. But your comment about the hives getting better is, obviously, very interesting to me. Do you mind if I ask what caused the improvement? I'm exactly where you were at your worst with the hives, and I've been there for ten years now. I'd love to know if there was something I could do about it. (I'm even on Xolair now, but although that helps every other allergy I have, it doesn't appear to do much for the urticaria. Maybe it's not IgE mediated.)

I am so behind...

[hakainokami.livejournal.com]

You could try Apricot Kernal oil. I don't know about its reactivity, but I use it at work and it absorbs nicely.
I too have a WTF kind of allergy^_^ I'm allergic to tapioca. The allergist, doesnt even know of anyone else allergic to Tapioca that isn't allergic to all latex family plants. And by allergic I mean not only anaphalactic shock, but also hives and throat swelling from modified food starch and dextrin made from tapioca- two things that arn't normally labed for source because the protien count in them is so low. (Which actually made my food allergy nearly impossible to figure out.) Vegan and Ceiliac sites will actually tout the stuff as an allergy free alternative. and now quite possibly my mom has Ceiliac, so its probably a good thing I'm getting married and moving out soonish.