I've suffered from an allergy to dust, sawdust, and fine particles, ever since I graduated from high school. Shortly after I graduated, I moved with my mother into a small cottage. For some reason, shortly after starting to live in that place, I started getting sneezing fits, runny nose, eyes, stuffed up and itchy nose. My condition became so bad that I went to be examined by the local doctor. His diagnosis was that I was allergic to dust, and fine particles. I expected him to prescribe an effective medication to make my symptoms go away but instead, his recommendation was to remove all the dust from the environment where I lived.

So I helped do a lot of vacuuming and general cleaning in the house, to try to get rid of as much dust as possible. It didn't really work well so when I had a bad attack, I used over the counter allergy medication called Dimetapp. It seemed to stop the sneezing fits and the itchy and stuffed up nose but one side effect was, it made me really sleepy.

Part of the problem might have been that my mother had a habit of shaking out the bed linen, before making up my bed. In particular she would shake out, or snap the sheet before arranging it on the mattress. This seemed to shake out what ever lint or loose material that was attached to the sheet and always seemed to make my condition worse.

When I moved to my work location accommodation, my allergies improved, except when I was close to where a chain saw was cutting wood. The sawdust seemed to make me experience many of the same symptoms as the laundry dust had in the house.

I have learned that it is thought that the dust in a room does not really cause the allergy symptoms. There is a point of view that dust mite insects living on the grains of dust are actually responsible for causing the person's discomfort.

The house mites, like all living things eat, and then eliminate their waste. The mite's eliminations contain various protein type substances. When you breathe these in or they come in contact with your skin, your body makes antibodies. Your antibodies release a chemical known as histamine. Histamine produces all my nasty sneezing and stuffed up runny nose symptoms.

Because my mother also had allergies, it is thought that, I also carry the predisposition to the discomfort of allergies as having allergies is thought to be a hereditary condition.

That doesn't really explain why I get all the same symptoms in a place where there is sawdust in the air. Any time I am around fine particles of sawdust my condition flares up. That is one reason why I would not want to work In a saw mill, or plywood plant where there are fine wood particles floating all over in the air as I would always be a sneezing worker.

I find that by staying away from areas contaminated with these fine particles, my condition has almost completely disappeared.

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Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Allergies
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