quantified sneezes

January 12, 2016 9:01 AM

Thomas Blomseth tracked his sneezes for five years, over 60,000 of them, and may have ended his pollen allergy
posted by the man of twists and turns (13 comments total)

Thomas,

I see you mention nasal rinsing.

*fist pound*

Sincerely,
Another Neti pot user fighting overwhelming, lifelong allergy sneezes
posted by RolandOfEld at 9:23 AM on January 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

My junior high school sex-ed class in rural Alberta prompted a question from a student: "What does an orgasm feel like?"

The answer from the educator: "Like a good sneeze."

Probably not so much after 60,000 of them. Orgasms *or* sneezes.
posted by clawsoon at 9:29 AM on January 12, 2016

I tracked my allergies - I have bad tree and grass pollen allergies - and found that my symptoms are worst when birch pollen blooms, though oak is also bad. The scratch test just said "tree" so it was good to get more detail - pollen.com tells you when which trees are blooming.

Also this didn't surprise me at all:

There were other unexpected insights from all the data he had gathered. He noticed, for instance, that the gap between two sneezes was never more than a few minutes. And such sneezing always occurred in clusters, rather than evenly spread out through the pollen season. That observation made him think that his body was trying to expel the pollen as soon as it could.

Why would they be evenly spread out? When I have an allergic reaction (I also have bad dust allergies) and it feels like your body is on an all out assault (when I am unmedicated). Violent sneezes, watery eyes - even my skin feels like it's on fire.
posted by sweetkid at 9:42 AM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sweetkid, I'm with you; any allergy sufferer knows they come in clusters. My family sneezes so powerfully we've been known to wake up babies on the other end of a phone line.

Also, I can't imagine having the time or headspace to do all that charting. Clearly, he has no kids.
posted by Measured Out my Life in Coffeespoons at 10:01 AM on January 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

"technique where water is poured through one nostril and excreted from the other" is possibly the least generous description of a process most people already find unpleasant. Plus, "excrete" is utterly the wrong word there.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 10:09 AM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also, I can't imagine having the time or headspace to do all that charting. Clearly, he has no kids.

Or coffeespoons! ;)
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:10 AM on January 12, 2016

Neti pots do nothing for me. The sneezing is not always super bad, but the itching, inside my ears, in my eyes, even on my skin in general, is just torture. Stupid body. Only Benadryl helps, even though it makes me sleepy. Beats clawing at my own face.

This article didn't really offer much hope, and I do not care if "allergies might be good for you, we shouldn't eliminate them entirely!" because again, the itching. The sneezes that frighten people and the rivers of nasal goo that disgust them. The raw spot under your nose from tissues. Not being able to smell or taste things. I want to make it stop.
posted by emjaybee at 11:02 AM on January 12, 2016

Another Neti pot user fighting overwhelming, lifelong allergy sneezes

Just boil that water so you don't get the brain-eating amoebae, OK?
posted by leotrotsky at 11:13 AM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Nobody noticed how the second thing the guy did was to move to a new house??

Nasal rinsing does help with my sneezing, but for the infernal eye itch, only eye drops have done the trick. I'm trying the 'take a bit of local raw honey (which contains pollen) everyday' remedy this year, and we'll see how that goes.
posted by of strange foe at 11:27 AM on January 12, 2016

Just boil that water so you don't get the brain-eating amoebae, OK?

Nope, I don't worry about that one iota, nor do I think there's any real reason for others to, but whatever floats your boat... Been there, discussed that.

I'm good without that extraneous concern in my life. I just use cold tapwater and heat it up in a kettle and spend my nervous points elsewhere because, as I understand it, much of the risk, in the home because the wild is another (but also overblown) story, is from either a terrible, terrible tapwater source or from an improperly functioning hot water heater tank. Again, I've talked to people who have written papers about this sort of thing so *shrug*.
posted by RolandOfEld at 11:38 AM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

So... just the trial-and-error life of every allergy sufferer but with a ton of tracking and numbers, then?

I've been under the impression that allergies are not actually good for you, more just a weird side effect of eosinophilia and a lot of other mechanisms bodies have to protect against parasites, and that it's hard to turn off allergies effectively without turning off important immune processes. But this is just what I've pieced together from 30 years of going to allergists and my skin hating me.
posted by thetortoise at 1:27 PM on January 12, 2016

I sometimes sneeze as a result of cognitive dissonance. Theses psychological sneezes are somewhat different, less deeply seated in their source, than my allergic sneezes.
posted by Modest House at 2:45 PM on January 12, 2016

Terrible water source pretty much describes the water system of Louisiana.

Allergies suck.

Being allergic to things that are suppose to help allergies suck worse.
posted by AlexiaSky at 4:44 PM on January 12, 2016