Have you heard of Allergy Immunotherapy (Allergy shots)?

[Brendan Korpiel]

Hey Rip,

I've been doing these for a couple of years now. It involves getting an allergy test to see what seasonal allergies you are allergic to, and mixing them in a vial for a subcutaneous injection. It begins with something like 0.01 mL 1:10000 of the final dose, and works up to maintenance dose 0.5mL 1:1. You come back for the shots every week or so, slowly building up the amount and dosage. It uses the principles of stress-recovery-adaptation to facilitate this.

I do feel like it has improved my seasonal allergies. Just wondering if you have ever heard of this or known someone that has tried it.

Thanks,
Brendan

[Mark Rippetoe]

It has made the medical services industry a lot of money over the past 70 years. I don't know if they work, probably not.

[Subby]

I've gone through this as a kid for a bee allergy because I was getting escalating reactions and had a family history of anaphylaxis to bees.

Good for getting me over my fear of needles as a kid, I don't know if it worked, I've only had one sting since and it caused no reaction beyond local swelling. I was told you need 2-3 stings with no reaction to the sting to count it as a success, one of the nurses said in the "good old days" they used to put an actual bee on you to sting you to test.

I had a blood test a few years back to test my allergy and the results for the relevant antigens were level 4 out of a 7 level scale which was described as "possibly allergic, possibly not."

I'd need to be stung a few more times to know whether it worked or not.

It's a big time commitment, I don't know how much it was here in Aus because I was a kid so it was paid via taxes. I wouldn't bother getting it for something that isn't life threatening.

[Max Wynn]

It has made the medical services industry a lot of money over the past 70 years. I don't know if they work, probably not.

Technically Starting Strength Gyms are in the “medical service industry”. The negative connotation of this term relies on the fact that most of these “services” are bad/harmful. However, I fail to see how it is any different than barbell training. Barbell training deals with an incrementally greater load, and Allergy Immunotherapy deals with an incrementally greater dose. Regarding its efficacy, the only negative thing I see about this is that the dose is capped at an arbitrary value and is never progressed from there. So, good idea poor execution?

[Jdcuth]

It depends. Let’s say you have a clinical immediate hypersensitivity reaction (includes angioedema/anaphylaxis/acute asthma) but in this scenario more likely hayfever. You get it on a seasonal basis so work out a likely culprit (e.g. tree pollen) and then get your specific IgE tested and it is very raised - immunotherapy may help. But blanket testing multiple specific IgE can show lots of false positives i.e you have high levels against something but all it means is you are sensitised and the allergen causes you no symptoms and immunotherapy in that context would be useless

[David A. Rowe]

I had extremely poor luck with them when I was a child and teenager. I even went to one guy whose bright idea was to split the allergens up across multiple shots.

In the end, the only thing that worked for me was a combination of Allegra and Flonase for heavy seasonal allergy periods.

Also interesting: when I finally got a solid diagnosis on food intolerances post infection (MCAS), my allergies improved dramatically even without taking OTC stuff.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I've gone through this as a kid for a bee allergy because I was getting escalating reactions and had a family history of anaphylaxis to bees.

Good for getting me over my fear of needles as a kid, I don't know if it worked, I've only had one sting since and it caused no reaction beyond local swelling. I was told you need 2-3 stings with no reaction to the sting to count it as a success, one of the nurses said in the "good old days" they used to put an actual bee on you to sting you to test.

I had a blood test a few years back to test my allergy and the results for the relevant antigens were level 4 out of a 7 level scale which was described as "possibly allergic, possibly not."

I'd need to be stung a few more times to know whether it worked or not.

It's a big time commitment, I don't know how much it was here in Aus because I was a kid so it was paid via taxes. I wouldn't bother getting it for something that isn't life threatening.

Seasonal allergies shots and anaphylaxis treatments are two very different things.

Technically Starting Strength Gyms are in the “medical service industry”.

How do you know this, Max?

[That_guy_Over_there]

I feel that seasonal allergies can be controlled with diet changes, as well as things like asthma. For my wife cutting out processed Dairy and Grains was a major improvement. Going Carnivore virtually eliminated them. A friend of ours has had the same results.

Brendan after years of shots you think it might have improved. I think 3 months on meat and it will be gone completely.

[Maybach]

This is moderately interesting because it gets into the nitty gritty of what actually constitutes stressors an adaptations. Allergens are stressors, but allergic reactions are both the thing that actually causes undesirable symptoms, and the actual adaptation to the stress. A human adapted to the stress of pollen in their nasal passages is in fact, a sneezing, congested human. But I suppose the supposition here is that, by inflicting long term exposure to the stress, more subtle, less distressing adaptations might occur, which somehow make the actual condition of having pollen enter the system less stressful. What might those be? I don't know enough to say. Are people who do not experience seasonal allergies in possession of a greater degree of these adaptations? Do "maladaptations" such as seasonal allergies and anaphylaxis constitute adaptations which can be trained? Is this desirable? Are there analogous conditions in strength training: maladaptive responses that must be tiptoed around? The existence of such things seems to underpin a great deal of the consensus on strength and conditioning.

Perhaps in some far flung optimistic future science will be equipped to answer such questions.

[Stump]

Seasonal allergy remedy: Local raw honey.