Anyone else experience this? I have many allergies, which are worse since training for triathlon. The link suggests
even minimal childhood exposure to pool chlorine causes a higher chance of adult hayfever.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061124/hl_nm/swimming_phay_fever_dc
Wear a nose clip → no more pool allergies.
Oh hell yeah. Got hayfever pretty badly all my life starting in early childhood. Went to the public pool occasionally until about 12 yrs old, then a lot for about the next four years. I was pretty sedentary through my 30’s and early 40’s. I started training in earnest for an Oly in 1998, and an unexpected side effect of all of the time outdoors running and cycling was that my hayfever almost disappeared. At the time, I was in London and swam at a pool that likely had low chlorine levels, or they may have used something else. Moved back to Pennsylvania in 1999, and joined a health club to have a place to swim. Somewhere in 2000, I started to get hayfever again, and it has gotten progressively worse. My pool has a pretty high chlorine level, because they have other issues (as an aside, I swam tonight and the lifeguard, who is only there Friday nights and weekends, asked me if the Department of Health had closed the pool at all during the week! my I feel better about whatever is growing in there).
This is anecdotal I know, but I really struggled to understand why my hayfever came back like it did when I have been pretty consistent with how much I train outdoors year to year, and this article makes a lot of sense. Especially the damage to the lungs part - one thing I began to experience in 2000 was exercise-induced asthma. From May to September, it can be brutal. Advair and Singulair help, but on an evening with high pollen and ozone levels, I sometimes am gasping on the first roller of a group ride and I’m dropped for the evening. I started with the allergy serum treatment two years ago, and it has dramatically reduced the rhinitis, but hasn’t affected the EIA thing at all. And maybe it won’t if I am continually antagonizing the lining of my lungs with the chlorination by-products as mentioned in the article.
And nose clips don’t reduce the amount of contaminated air you take in, I didn’t understand that comment.
Would be very interested in what others have to say.
Brian
The clip will not help. I notice it too…I am thinking that the water in the pool and all the chemicals wash away the mucus that protects your sinus…kinda gross but what the hell. I may be wrong, I will wait for an ENT to chime in to confirm.
Check out Vasomotor rhinitis- atrovent nasal spray before works wonders
.
when i was a swimmer way back in the day, i used to have to take nasal sprays pretty regularly just so i could breathe at night…
i’ve tried a nose clip, don’t know how anybody swims in one !! i have trouble enough getting air without cutting off one of my options of getting breath in and out !!!
V.S. is probably more close to the cause of your problems. I’ve sold a prescription anti-histamime for years and one thing I can say is that ‘hay fever,’ is directly caused by one thing - RAGWEED! The term ‘hay-fever’ evolved from the allergies people would suffer in mid-Aug through the first hard freeze. The culprit is ragweed, when farmer’s would cut their late summer hay, they would also cut the ragweed that grows at the edges of their fields…hence the term. Here in NE Ohio, you can see the ragweed growing up the sides of the highway along the guardrails. Ragweed is one of the most potent allergens known, and many people suffer during the late summer/early fall. Once you get your first hard freeze, ragweed is toast!
If you are having a problem with allergies in late fall/winter, you are probably not suffering from ‘hay fever,’ per say. The most likely cause is, as V.S. suggested, a vaso-motor response similar to what some of us have occur when we run outdoors in the winter and our noses run. The degree of severity ranges from person to person, best to check with your physician.
Good Luck
Best
Mark
Score another vote for the anecdotal crowd. Sort of a drastic solution, I found a club with a salt water pool. It’s GREAT!!!
Have these “hayfever” sympthoms after swimming, in both freshwater and chlorinated water. Have no other known allegies. I’m handling it this way:
With these 3 factors, I can swim up to 3 times a week without any problems after the swims. If I stop with one of them, one weekly swim is enough.
BS, it works for me. Its drug free and cheap! It took me over a month to get used to it so don’t just try it once and throw it away. You have to keep the chlorine out of your nose where it dries out and irritates the sinuses.
I had the same problem with swimming causing my nose and head to completely stop up. I had to use nose spray to be able to sleep at night. I saw a couple doctors and they were complete idiots. I don’t remember how I finally figured out how a simple nose clip works wonders. I have been using one for 10 years now. If I loose it and don’t wear it for even a few laps, I’ll get all stuffy again a few hours after the swim.
Clorine was absolutley killing my allergies, a 30 min swim by the end of the day would leave me feeling the same as doing a double century with bad nutrition!
I reluctantly went to see a docter and was perscribed a steroid nose spray that when combined with daily allergy tables cured the issues 100%. This solution also had a extra benefit of allowing me to hang around cats and dogs again.
chlorine does this to me from dripping in during flip turns…nose clip works 100% of the time, but looks dorky, for sure…but you’re in the water, so not too public
.