RaW Ragweed Pollen Allergy Treatment

vac·cine

vakˈsēn/

noun

MEDICINE

1. a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases, prepared from the causative agent of a disease, its products, or a synthetic substitute, treated to act as an antigen without inducing the disease.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor. I am not a scientist or expert. Of anything. I'm an idiot with an internet connection. I care very much about treating my allergies and tried to find out all I can. I seem to have cured my own allergy to Ragweed Pollen and want to share my experience. That doesn't necessarily mean it will work for you. I am very much pro-science and very much against various forms of unproven or fraudulent medical practices. There are a lot of homeopathic doctors, quacks, chiropractors operating outside their scope, and holistic "healers" selling bullshit cures, supplements, detoxes and "cleanses". This is not what that is and I don't endorse that crap whatsoever.  I think you'll find that my anecdotal evidence is in sync with the scientific literature on this subject.

This blog post deals with Pollen allergy, specifically ragweed. However, grass pollen allergy is mostly the same and there is plenty of evidence that this works for grass pollen allergies as well. I've come across similar studies for dust and food allergies, but you'll have to do your own digging on those allergies. I didn't really look into those studies much. Again, my main focus was ragweed (RW) pollen allergy.

Short story:

I gathered raw Ragweed during peak pollen season and put it in my freezer. For 5 months out of the year, starting 3 months before RW season, I put a little bit of the weed under my tongue for 20 minutes and then swallow it. The idea is to build immunity to the pollen. It must be done for 3-5 years. I call this the RaW method, short for Ragweed Allergy Winning. And fuck you if you don't like the name.

Long story:

August 1988

When I was young, I was "sick". Runny nose, burning itchy eyes, sneezing fits. It sucked. Bad. My mom took me to the Doctor and I was informed I was allergic to "grass". I don't know if they just told me it was "grass" because I was so young and they maybe figured I wouldn't know the difference. Maybe because the diagnostic tools available couldn't give more detail than that. But I do wish they could have been more specific because telling a kid they're allergic to "grass" gives a bit of illegitimate fear. I know the truth now after dealing with this allergy for decades, and seeing my symptoms coincide with ragweed pollen season which typically is August 15 - September 15. I was fairly certain I was allergic to RW pollen and not "grass" or even grass pollen which is a spring pollen.

August 2008

Claritin had been out for about a decade and that had been my "go to" Allergy med, I thought there had to be a better treatment by now. So I went to the Doctor and she told me the same old thing. Paraphrasing her, "Take over-the-counter stuff (claritin). There are special treatment shots, but those are for severe suffers and not for a piece of shit like you." Waste of a trip to the Dr. Office. I gave up.

September 2015

I'm interested again in treating my allergies. I've tried Allegra and Zyrtec, but they all made me feel drained and moody. I searched the web. And I found a new treatment. A tablet taken daily that contains the RW allergen is placed under the tongue and dissolved into your body. This not only reduces symptoms, it was curing people with RW pollen allergy. I was fucking pumped to hear that! Fuck yeah! Oh wait, then I saw the price... $300 for a pack of 30 tablets.  And they have to be taken for at least 4 months. Yikes... I'm cheap. I'm not paying that.😞

And what if it doesn't work? How does it work? I was determined to figure this out. So I tried to find all the studies I could. And it turns out there are TONS of studies on Immunotherapy that confirm this treatment works. The first recorded study goes back to 1911. Since then there have been so many studies concluding its effectiveness. I couldn't list them all but here are a few:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12804442
https://waojournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1939-4551-7-6
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4406916/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1034/j.1398-9995.2000.00655.x
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23706715
https://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(08)01849-6/fulltext
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5509156/

Of course there is a study from this year, out of Europe, that concludes more testing is needed.. Well fuck you Europe! I'll test it myself!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29788026

The earlier studies didn't even have tablets to use. They were getting the pollen and making extracts and such, then injecting the allergens (subcutaneous immunotherapy (SCIT)) or dissolving and absorbing the pollen under the tongue (sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT)). Simply ingesting the pollen had poor results. Under the tongue there are certain cells that are more receptive to activating immunity. This got me thinking... could an idiot like me make my own medicine?

That's when I found Susan Weed on youtube. She was making a tincture with RW pollen and 100 proof Vodka. Before seeing this video I didn't even know what a ragweed looked like. Here she was, showing me the plant and showing how to make her RW medicine. If you watch her video she talks about the pollen at a microscopic level, so I don't think she's just some hippie swindler. She seems to have some background in science. However, she seems to know nothing about treatment schedule and she does sell some pretty sketchy stuff like alternative cancer treatments. For me this probably falls under fraudulent medical practice/sales activity... Whatever lady. Anyway, I liked that she was trying to make this treatment on her own and it was already backed by science so I figured it was worth a try. I didn't like her using alcohol though. I'm probably wrong but I felt like it would destroy the allergen. So I decided I would gather the raw plant and just freeze it. But you have to harvest it during peak allergy season to get the pollen. By this time it was already past RW pollen season, so I couldn't collect anymore and had to wait until next RW pollen season the following year.

September 2016 

RW season rolled around and I was ready to collect! I was afraid to collect it myself so I had my son whom is not allergic, cut off the tops of the plant where the pollen is produced. I had him get me two ziplock bags and I threw them in the freezer for the next year.

May 2017

I set a daily reminder in my calendar to take the RW each day before work. At first I was taking too much, now I only take a small piece with about 5-8 flowers on it. You are putting the poison in your mouth. If you have RW pollen allergy, your mouth is going to react! For the first year of treatments it was pretty bad. After about 5 minutes of putting the weed in my mouth I could feel it tingle and burn a little. My lips and tongue would get puffy at varying levels. This would last about an hour. Knowing what I know now about dosing, I was using way too much at that time. But the more I was doing the treatments the less severe my reactions were. I thought, one of two things are happening:
a) The pollen is becoming less potent, or
b) this is working and I'm becoming immune to RW.

Thankfully, it appears to be latter of the two because when pollen season came around my allergic reactions were less severe. I still wasn't fully convinced that the RaW treatments were working. I still needed to take half a pill of claritin each day and I thought maybe the pollen isn't as thick this year? Am I fooling myself with these treatments? Afterall, I'm not immune to the gazebo effect.

August 2018 

I had started treatments 3 months prior and while others were saying how bad pollen was, my symptoms were so minimal I didn't need any allergy meds at all. I still had a sneeze here and there. A bit of itchiness in my throat. But I'm convinced that this is working now. My mouth reactions to the RaW method are minimal also compared to the first year, first few months of treatment. When I think that I may be completely cured by next year it brings a Non-allergy-induced tear to my eye.

Treatment-related Adverse Effects 

Even though this would be considered "natural" "organic" "preservative free", and all the other marketing words people use to sell themselves on higher priced bullshit, It IS dangerous. There is a study of 1000 allergy patients, one person out of those thousand had gone into anaphylactic shock, had to be treated with Epinephrine, and the allergy treatment had to be stopped. This also happened in another study of 600 patients. Those are just a few extreme cases that I had come across so I'm sure it has happened more than that. Those are terrible odds when compared to vaccines administered today. It also might explain why doctors and scientists are so cautious about these types of Immunotherapy treatments. The prescribed Tablets suggest taking the first dose with a doctor, and epipen available, just in case of severe reaction.

And of course, the oral reactions are almost guaranteed.

The Future

A link has been established between pollen allergies and Oral Allergy Syndrome (which is an oral reaction to raw fruits and vegetables). So it is also possible that immunotherapy could help there as well. One study has shown that certain fruits are associated with specific pollens:

• Birch pollen: apple, almond, carrot, celery, cherry, hazelnut, kiwi, peach, pear, plum
• Grass pollen: celery, melons, oranges, peaches, tomato
• Ragweed pollen: banana, cucumber, melons, sunflower seeds, zucchini

There are still many questions about this treatment. What is the best dosing that provides the most immunity with the least amount of adverse effects? Would a constant one year treatment be more beneficial? Or maybe 2 months on, one month off? Some dosing studies suggest that the amount of pollen isn't nearly as important as prolonged, months long exposure. Some allergists suggest lighter doses should be given three times a day instead of once a day.

Allergen avoidance may be useful for combating food allergies, but not with airborne pollens. The increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is better for all plant life, which also means more pollen production. Couple that with more people working in air conditioned/filtered office environments which decreases their exposure, and that might be making reactions more severe. This could be an explanation as to why pollen allergy suffering is on the rise. Luckily, more research is being done and more treatments are being tested. Coupling allergen immunotherapy with various adjuvants could increase its effectiveness and shorten treatment time. When? Who knows. With FDA regulations and overly cautious Doctors and scientists, it may be a very long time. In the meantime, try going RaW. At your own risk of course.