Can you be allergic to something only on occasion?
Asked by
Val123 (
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February 3rd, 2010
I have a white German Shepherd and twice a year the dog sheds like a BANSHEE! It’s incredible. You can grab fistfuls of fur out at a time. I swear, you could make five size large adult sweaters out of all the hair she sheds during that time. Her hair is all over the house for about two weeks and it’s a never ending battle to keep it swept up.
Now, I’ve never been prone to allergies, and in all of the five years we’ve had Dakota her shedding has never affected me (except I hate vacuuming twice a day!) However, in the last week I have been doing nothing but coughing and sneezing and my nose is running and I’m pretty miserable. But….if I leave the house it goes away, so I MUST be reacting to the dog.
She’s reaching the end of her most recent shedding incident, and soon after I swept up yesterday, the itching and sneezing started receding, and it’s pretty much gone now.
How come I don’t normal have a problem, and then suddenly I DO have a problem? I mean, either I’m allergic to the dander, or I’m not, right?
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12 Answers
That makes sense. Women seem to develop an allergy to me only after they’ve gotten to know me, for example.
I know that my allergies to my pets,etc. seem to come and go as they please. I had an almost allergic sensitivity to latex when I was younger (guess how I figured that out) which has since disappeared
What I’ve been reading/hearing online is that allergies can spring up very suddenly, even in adults.
As I understand it there are a few possible reasons-
1— It’s not really the dog, it’s just something else occurring at the same time.
2— You’ve always been allergic but it was such a small reaction you didn’t notice. Thus, it built over time and now you’ve been exposed again and you’re body is reacting more strongly- flicking on a higher histamine reaction like a light switch.
3— Sometimes people develop allergies after repeat exposure even when they weren’t allergic to begin with.
Feel free to correct me Dr. Jellies out there.
Have you recently (or since Dakota’s last shedding incident) changed dog shampoos? That could be it, and now it’s coming out in large amounts with her fur. That’s all I could think of.
Ohh…the shampoo hypothesis is interesting.
@MagsRags yay! Too bad I misspelled ‘your’. le sigh.
It might also be psychosomatic, a fancy way of saying that your body may be reacting this way because of something else that has recently happened. more here
Thanks for the responses, guys! You made me laugh in the process and I always appreciate that!
Shampoo? Shoot. The dog hasn’t had a bath in over a year. Poor thing. Really needs one too.
But, my allergies are HEALED now! It’s a freakin’ miracle!
@Val123 well, maybe it’s something that has been building up in the dog’s fur, then.
What you’re describing actually makes sense. My allergist told me that everyone has a certain tolerance for anything, and as long as the level of the substance is below your threshold, you won’t notice, but when it rises above it, is when we talk about having an allergy to the substance. So someone who is said to be allergic to dust mites or cat dander just has a lower tolerance level for those things than the average person.
@ChocolateReigns I’ll bet you’re right. Maybe it’s because she hasn’t had a bath in a while.
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