PCOS Message Board - View Single Post

guineapig · 03-22-2006, 06:59 AM

Ooo, oo, I'm so excited about this topic!! Yes, hormones influence allergies BIGTIME! Estrogen increases your body's immune response (aka sets off allergies) bigtime. That's why pregnant women always have their nose dripping down their face, or suddenly develop asthma. Most PCOS are high in estrogen due to lack of ovulation, so our allergies get worse. Progesterone, or the androgen testosterone subdue the immune response (calm down allergies). They've actually done studies where severe asthmatics who kept getting hospitalized right before AF (when estrogen is the only hormone in the bod) got big shots of real progesterone. The asthma stopped, or at least to the point they didn't have to go to the ER! My allergist says most of his ER admits are the week right before or after AF (when estrogen is high & unopposed). Some of them had to be put on bcp to control asthma.

After coming off metformin, but still on spiro, I was not ovulating but producing mad amounts of estrogen w/o any progesterone (thanks met). I got asthma for the first time ever and inhalers really didn't do squat. Suddenly when AF started, it would disappear. Now I'm on Prometrium after O and PCOS meds (well, DCI) and O'ing I think, I don't really have it anymore--even though it's springtime here.

Actually, I have been able to track my ovulation once or twice because right before O my asthma gets bad again (estrogen up) and after O the progesterone kicks up and my asthma goes away (and temps spike). Terrible fertility monitoring, but just wanted to show ya--it's not all in your head.