An Awful Allergy - ah ah ah ah-choo!!!

CEDAR FEVER from The Rivard Report

Eyelids feel like sandpaper? Sneezing nonstop? Welcome to “cedar fever,” an annual malady that plagues San Antonio and Central Texas every winter.

Ashe juniper trees, commonly known as “mountain cedars,” cause the seasonal affliction. As part of their reproductive cycle, male trees produce small pollen cones, while the female trees produce small seed cones that look like blueberries, explained Estelle Levetin, PhD and a professor of biological science at the University of Tulsa who has studied Ashe juniper for decades. Upon maturity, the male trees release billions of pollen granules into the wind –usually on a cold, breezy day. That yellow pollen dust, filled with myriad allergenic compounds, can travel up to 200 miles.

The bushy evergreens are native from southern Missouri to northern Mexico, but are especially dense in Central Texas and the Hill Country.

Cedar fever season typically starts after Thanksgiving and continues through February. But climate change may cause those who suffer its effects to adjust to a longer, more intense season. Warming temperatures appear to be extending the trees’ reproductive cycle and boosting pollen counts, according to the Fourth Annual Climate Change Assessment released earlier this year.

“We are early into the season,” said Dr. Eliseo Villalobos, an internist and Fellow of the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI) at the Allergy Institute of San Antonio. Villalobos said that conditions this season seem pretty typical, but that the highest allergy counts are coming earlier in the season.

“Usually it peaks mid-January, but the counts last year peaked around late December … which it seems to be doing again this year,” he said.

The AAAAI pollen counter has listed San Antonio in the red zone with pollen counts rated “very high” every day since Dec. 23.  

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After my marriage Mike and I moved to Houston and then Austin TX. Shockingly I got the worst allergy of my life, so bad I went to the doctor.

Cedar Fever was the diagnosis. My eyes were so swollen I couldn't see out of them. 

I suppose Dr Wooten prescribed meds which I readily took, tho the allergy never left until the yellow pollen dust was mostly out of the air.

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And now upstairs I go to watch a Midsomers Night Mystery with Barnaby. Hope it's good.



SHANGHAI CHINA. 

LOVELY LOVELY LOVELY, but don't ask what they're doing.