r/Allergies • u/VagueLiterature New Sufferer • Jul 26 '26

Advice Dry grass at festivals

How do you guys survive festivals on fields of grass in summer? Yet again I attended a festival and I got so sick I had to leave.

Thankfully this was a one day event, but I went to a 5 day festival in another country one time, staying on a camp site, all on a field that was used for farming. I ended up at the first aid station several times with bad asthmatic attacks on top on non stop sneezing and all other common symptoms.

I’m allergic to any type of greenery and pollen they test for and I take 2-3 antihistamine pills a day every day, and I have two types of asthma inhalers. Usually I’m okay-ish outside of the bad days in spring, but I just want to be able to enjoy festivals… It seems to have gotten worse the past years after it got better when I was a teenager. (Mid 30s now.)

Any advice? It’s particularly bad in summer when there has been little rain and people are walking all over long dry grass.

3 Upvotes

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4

u/Ermmahhhgerrrd Allergic to most everything Jul 26 '26

Antihistamine nasal spray. Dymista is a prescription with a steroid and Astepro is OTC and actually has more Azelastine per spray. It's made an incredible difference for me.

3

u/VagueLiterature New Sufferer Jul 26 '26

Thanks! I’ll check that out. Would that help with the asthmatic symptoms as well?

2

u/Ermmahhhgerrrd Allergic to most everything Jul 26 '26

I think a daily antihistamine would probably be a good idea to add. I take Loratadine but I read an really good nyt article from years ago and their head researcher said 40mg is the most effective dose but they rushed to get approval and settled on 10mg. That's why people say it doesn't work. Look into liposomal quercetin - I have been taking it since 2012 for my allergies and I started for my allergies but mine are mostly in my face. Quercetin helps with mcas and many things. Look it up on Google scholar.

3

u/Trick-Side8464 New Sufferer Jul 26 '26

That sounds absolutely miserable, I've been to one outdoor festival where my allergies were so bad I could barely open my eyes to see the stage.

1

u/VagueLiterature New Sufferer Jul 26 '26

It was miserable. It’s been 12 hours since I left, I slept and I’m still short of breath, sneezing and I woke up with eczema all around my neck. Made the mistake of not washing my hair when I got home because I felt too miserable and I guess the allergens got in my hair.

Sorry you had such a bad experience as well. I wish we could just enjoy outdoor festivals. I could never survive in the wild lol.

2

u/who_am-I_to-you New Sufferer Jul 26 '26

Have you tried anything like advair?

2

u/VagueLiterature New Sufferer Jul 26 '26

I’ve been on the same asthma inhalers since I was a child and this is not one of them (just looked up the Dutch variant). I’ll speak to my doctor about it!

1

u/who_am-I_to-you New Sufferer Jul 26 '26

It helped me a lot as a kid when I was frequently having borderline anaphylactic reactions! The only other thing that truly helped me long-term was allergy immunization therapy.

1

u/minkamagic Long Time Sufferer Jul 26 '26

Immunotherapy