Switching to a keto diet helped way more, though. I still get flushes, rashes, etc., but the severity has gone down to the point they are random annoyances that go away as opposed to medical events.
Cromolyn and/or ketotifen are the big guns for mast cell disorders, though.
I've been dealing with my symptoms for 17 years this year and Quercitin + Zyrtec + Pepcid is the first thing that's made a dent in it. I started a few weeks ago and it's been amazing but I'm not experiencing full relief yet.
This was the combo Claude recommended I start with for a trial, one message after I told it my symptoms. No doctor has ever been able to help.
Copilot recommended these supplements. Due to a lack of studies relating directly to the effect of these supplements on nasal polyps, it inferred they might help based on the known action of the supplements and the theorised cause of polyps, so it could all be nonsense. That said, both those supplements are considered safe at the doses I take and it appears to help, so even if it is a placebo effect I'm happy.
I was in a similar situation where Claude finally helped me make a breakthrough. It seems that my issue is entirely related to histamine levels.
* H1 (like Zyrtec) help block the body’s response to high histamines
* H2 (like Pepcid) actually worsen my symptoms overtime because my body was readjusting baseline
* Quercitin and DAO enzyme help massively.
Also being extremely mindful of histamine levels in food helps keep my baselines low. This can be tricky because histamines collect as food ages (so two batches of something can lead to different responses) and some “low histamine” foods can still trigger your body to dump histamines (so they actually act like high histamine foods).
I tried all sorts of different things, but couldn’t nail down a pattern for years. Even worse, some days I could tolerate something and others it would blow me up. It wasn’t until I started telling Claude literally everything I consumed and how I felt that it dialed into histamine response triggering mast cell activation.
I started to realize that a lot of “low histamine” foods either build up histamines as they age (so leftovers kill me) and some “low histamine” foods actually cause the body to naturally liberate histamine (essentially mimicking high histamine foods).
It’s extremely hard to get a diagnosis because the triggers are seemingly random and don’t always correlate with common buckets.
Sad to hear that. You sound like a keeper. Anyway, are you free this weekend? ;)
If not, maybe op can reframe and grab life by the horns.
Health issues can be immensely stressful, and what is required to provide the best logistical and diagnostic support is very different from what is required to be a supportive partner and emotional caregiver. Doctors often fall into the trap of treating the disease and ignoring the patient, but at least that aligns with their job description. It is quite easy to do the same as a partner, and that is NOT the job. For certain personalities, it can often be a massive relief to disappear into searching the web and poring over medical research studies -- the key word there is "disappear". Plus, if someone is suffering physically, you can't really require them to have (what you think is) the "appropriate" amount of gratitude for what you're doing for them. (And physical suffering is always going to lead to mental suffering unless they're a 1000-year old enlightened monk.) You can be quite proud of your savior cred, and your partner can very reasonably tell you to shove that pride up your ass.
It's not about whether you're good enough or not. We all start with woefully naive views of how robust our relationships are. We get together as certain people at a certain time. Living together deepens and widens the basis for the relationship, and we'll all fool ourselves into thinking that nothing can break that apart. But fast forward a decade or two, and upend one or the other of your lives with a health challenge or some major life event, and you'll soon discover that you're in new ground and have to learn a bunch of brand new skills that you never needed before. And there's no particular reason why this person X who you bonded with years ago in environment Y is going to be easier to learn with than some random person off the street now that you're in environment not-Y with a different person X2 who evolved from person X -- just as you've evolved (or devolved) into Me2 from the Me you were. Especially not with the added challenge of a long history together of frictions and irritations that never mattered enough to tip things over the edge but do now in the new environment.
For the record, I'm still married to my X2 in my very-not-Y situation. For now. But I've seen enough that I would never look down on or even be surprised by the dissolution of even the strongest-seeming relationships when a novel challenge comes around.
Back to fairy tales -- Prince Charming's main claim to marriagability was his willingness to make out with a hot living corpse. Are you so sure your own claim is that much superior?
This is overly strong. X2 is likely similar to X and Me2 is similar to Me. X2 is certainly more likely to get along well with Me2 than a random, but far from guaranteed (which proves your point, but I wanted to rein in the pessimism)
My brother last year went to the doctor with an ear ache. The doctor prescribed him some liquids and pills. Only after he left he realised the doctor never even looked into his ear!
Human relationships are brutal sometimes. I still choose to treat others the way I would want to be treated, and some people _actually_ reciprocate, and you eventually learn who is who in your life, but this requires that you be open to the fact the majority won't, and that you will sometimes feel betrayed and used. You just have to accept that it's your decision to make, and decide what kind of person you want to be.
Other commenters are also probably right to one extent or another, the dynamic of the relationship probably changed pretty dramatically and that can create problems regardless.
Anyway, poor old AgentMasterRace probably feels like a depressing episode has turned into something they'd rather it didn't. Sorry for pontificating over your traumatic(?) event with allusions to my own. If I'm reading the meaning of their username correctly though, I feel less bad about it, lol.
There's also HSD, which has a lot of overlap and may yet be a subtype of EDS, but the genetic marker hasn't been found yet. And when you get a patient with the full associated combo of symptoms [0], each of which only reveal themselves or become problematic over a long span of time (e.g. eye problems at young age, period problems / endometriosis as teenager/adult, neurodiverse conditions only diagnosed in 30's, severe joint problems and fatigue in late 30's, etc), few people will actually link them together as possibly having the same single cause.
But thanks to the internet, people with symptom X will find other people with symptom X and before you know it you have a group of people that are like "Hey, we all have symptom X, Y, Z, A, B and C, what gives?".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermobility_spectrum_disorde...
The real problem is twofold. One is that EDS had historically been a diagnosis of exclusion, and a lot of the diagnostic tests were difficult. The second is that the disorders overwhelmingly affect women, and women tend to get ignored about chronic pain and fatigue.
Did doctors confirm Ehlers Danlos with genome sequencing?
"You're here for a prolactinoma?" "Nope" "I'd like to get this blood work done tho"
One week later the blood work confirmed her hunch.
Experience can get some crazy results.
I could not tell you the number of doctors who have rolled eyes at the mention of ehlers danlos and hypermobility disorders.