My wife has been diagnosed with this by allergist. Impairs her ability to raise her heart rate during exercise without a possible attack, wherein she can’t breath and all her blood rushes to her skin and she turns bright red. An epi pen is her last point of relief if she has an attack and cannot get out of it.
Anyone dealing with this or know anyone dealing with it? Help!!!
Doesn’t quite make sense since “anaphylaxis” is a complex set of chemical reactions that usually needs to be triggered by another “chemical” that binds to a sensitized cell. Mast cells, degranulate, release histamine, complement cascade and so on.
Also, what about anything else that raises the heart rate (i.e. sex, being frightened, speeding ticket, etc.)
What exactly could exercise release, chemically, that is not already present? I guess you could take some Benadryl prior to running 
Love to hear some other medical opinions on this.
She has symptoms consistent with what a leading MD at Harvard explained to her were reactions to 1. food/spices or 2. environmental conditions (heat, humidity, pollen, etc.). Beyond that, he noted that there is no cure, and she will probably only be able to manage the situation, based on her experience, thresholds, etc.
She is a competitive skydiver, and jumps in the hottest temps of summer. Heart rate is ??? The adreneline produced from skydiving is the what calms the histamines. It’s when her core body temp rises to a certain point and her whole body swells is when the anaphylaxis occurs. Really wierd.
Wondering if anyone has been able to manage their situation while consistently exercising, and how they do/did it.
But again, anaphylaxis needs a “trigger” (not heat) - like the pollen in the spring/summer, food/spices you mentioned, etc.
An increased heart rate (produced by “adrenaline”) could not trigger anaphylaxis and could indeed be “protective” as you mentioned due to the increased epinephrine release.
A “leading MD at Harvard” - now that is funny (In my own sort of way - I did some training there while in Residency - the certificate looks great on my wall though). Certainly is interesting though - did he (or anyone else) recommend any antihistamine prior to exercise?
something seems fishy about that diagnosis… I’d go get a second opnion, I could be wrong (won’t be the first time) but it seems that your body would release as much adrenaline working out as it would sky diving. In response to the increased metabolic demands on the body during a workout, adrenaline is released to increase the heart rate etc to meet these increase needs.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong…
But, I’d go get a second opnion.
Exercise does not induce anaphylaxis. Or, if it is true in her case her doctor should write it up and she will have a disease named after her as the first case.
This sounds like a “wastebasket diagnosis” that the doctor is throwing out because he/she doesn’t know what is going on but can’t bring him/herself to say that.
Perhaps she has a variant of malignant hyperthermia. She needs a second opinion bad.
Hypothermia-induced agglutination I’ve heard about, but not hyperthermia-induced anaphylaxis. Just trying to think of something that would release chemicals that would stimulate a cascade of sorts leading to an allergic response. We have all heard of exercise-induced asthma, so, whatever may be stimulating a degranulation of mast cells in the bronchial tree during exercise might be producing an even greater hyper-reactive state in her resulting in anaphylaxis? Certainly seems “out there” as a diagnosis, but, whaddaIknow?
This is a real condition, be careful getting advice about life threatening illnesses over the internet. quick thought, some are food related and others are not. Did he look into this? If you have a question get a second opinion from another allergist. Webmd may have some basic info
A girl on our high school swim team many years ago would react to the chlorine in the pool if it was over a certain level AND her exertion caused a mild asthma attack. We were all instructed on how to administer a shot if she were to go into shock. As it so happens, our senior year the girl’s team were the first to play in a water polo tournament and the pool had been “shocked” for the huge number of swimmers it would host over the weekend. About mid way through the first period she starts to have an attack, by the time we got her out of the water she was in full on anaphylactic shock. Scary to say the least. I can’t imagine dealing with that on a regular basis. Again, it took multiple things to trigger her attack, not just exertion.
Mark