5 – Sweat,
- While some people are ‘allergic’ to hard work, sweat allergies actually exist. The condition is called cholinergic urticaria and it’s surprisingly common. For sufferers, sweating can cause painful welts, rashes and even hives. Man, is there anything that won’t give you hives?
- The problem with treating and diagnosing a sweat allergy is that it’s easy to mistake it for an ordinary heat rash. Its symptoms also overlap with other skin and thyroid disorders, so if you want to deal with a sweat allergy you’ve first got to jump through fifty flaming hoops and rule out all other conditions.
- Once you know what you’re dealing with, you can treat it with antihistamines, antidepressants and anabolic steroids. It’s also an idea to lose excess weight and avoid eating spicy food. Oh, and try to keep your anxiety levels down. I know, I know… Easier said that done, but anxiety causes you to sweat, which will bring on more anxiety and before you know it you’re stuck in an infinite sweaty anxious loop.
4 – Clothing,
- While many fashionistas are allergic to bad style, some people are allergic to the clothes on their own back! This is called textile dermatitis and it’s caused by different things for different people. I mean, the world would be pretty boring if we were all allergic to the same stuff.
- Clothing allergies can be triggered by wool or cotton, or by synthetic materials like rubber, resins, chemical additives, dyes, glues, or tanning agents. It causes rashes, itching and even blisters.
- But, hey, it gets worse. Some people are even allergic to their own underwear! I think some celebrities have this. It causes the sufferer a lot of discomfort and will probably get them arrested for touching their junk. ‘No officer! I wasn’t touching myself in front of that playground! I have an underwear allergy!’ If you have this allergy consult a dermatologist before this becomes your reality.
3 – Beanbags,
- In 1996, a little boy suffered extreme respiratory failure because he was playing on one of the school’s beanbags.
- No, it wasn’t some haunted beanbag that came to life and tried to eat him, although that would be cool. I should patent that shit before Goosebumps gets onto it. No, the boy had an allergic to reaction to the dusty soybeans that were used to fill the bag.
- Soybean allergies are quite common. The boy probably knew not to eat them, but would’ve had no idea they were being used to fill his school beanbags. And this was in the Nineties, too, when beanbags were everywhere. He wouldn’t have been able to enter a room without seeing one of those super comfy death traps.
2 – Water,
- Nothing beats taking a dip on a hot day, but did you know one in twenty-three million people are allergic to our planet’s most abundant resource water? This extremely rare condition is called aquagenic urticaria and confines most people who suffer from it to their homes.
- People with this condition are hypersensitive to the ions found in non-distilled water. They’re fine to drink it, but they’ll get itchy hives if they’re submerged in water – doesn’t matter if it’s a pool, shower, or lake.
- One teenage sufferer can’t go swimming, enjoy a hot bath or even shower after a stressful day’s work. If she gets wet her body explodes in sore red lumps that take two hours to fade. Obviously she has to wash, but showering causes her so much pain that she can only do it for a minute at a time.
1 – Every Food and Drink Except Water,
- Australian boy Kaleb Bussenschutt has a severe medical condition that makes him allergic to everything but water. He’s so hypersensitive to the world around him that ingesting anything else triggers agonising stomach pain.
- The poor kid literally lives on a diet of water, ice cubes and one specific brand of lemonade. Since he can’t eat proper food, he has to get the nutrients he needs to live from a backpack feeding tube that pumps directly into his stomach.
- Unfortunately Kaleb’s allergies are so rare that no cure has been developed yet.
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