Studies show Alcohol Worsens allergies and asthma symptons

Health — By Ryan on June 18, 2010 11:27 pm

The New York Times has recently published an article this week quoting a couple of studies that demonstrated that regular alcohol consumption increases the severity and frequency of allergy and asthma symptons for those with pre-existing conditions.

In one study in Sweden in 2005, scientists looked at thousands of people and found that compared with the general population, those with diagnoses of asthma, bronchitis and hay fever were far more likely to experience sneezing, a runny nose and “lower-airway symptoms” after having a drink. Red wine and white wine were the most frequent triggers, and women, for unknown reasons, were about twice as likely to be affected as men.

Obviously warning people with such conditions to avoid other products containing high levels of histamines such as aged cheeses, pickled or fermented products and yeast-containing foods, like bread, cider and grapes.

A blog post put out at www.drvino.com (http://www.drvino.com/2010/04/26/wine-sulfites-allergies-histamines-red-alcohol/) goes into much more detail and does more independent fact checking, a very accurate depiction of the state of journalism today.  In a back and forth conversation with scientists he gets a more accurate summary of what’s going on here:

Dr. Bhutani suggests that when someone’s allergies are flared, alcohol can act as a congestant (a direct vasodilator, in his terms; because it is related to blood-alcohol levels, lower-alcohol wines should cause less congestion.). It’s similar to the way that people with allergies experience increased symptoms around other irritants such as second-hand smoke or strong scents. But he cautions that these indirect irritants are causes of allergy-like symptoms (called rhinitis), not allergies per se. He says that women are affected by this condition three times more than men.

Tags: allergies, bronchitis, drinking, histamines, suffer, wine