Every spring in Australia, we're bombarded with advertisements for antihistamines. Telfast, Zyrtec, Claratyne etc – the message is clear: pop a pill and your allergies are sorted. Easy! Doctors parrot the same simplistic narrative, creating a reinforcing loop that trivializes complex allergic disease. But for millions living with complex allergic conditions, this approach is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut – too often utilising the wrong tool entirely, causing more damage than good whilst ignoring the underlying complex intricacies.

I know this intimately. After living with severe IgE-mediated allergic disease since infancy, I experienced a rapid deterioration of my symptoms about four years ago at age 51. I sought out a 'specialist' through the public health system and after a months-long wait and countless administrative hurdles, I finally secured a Tele-health consultation with an immunologist in January 2022. My total IgE was over 2300 IU/mL – more than twenty three times the upper limit of normal. The 'specialist' said it was one of the highest levels she had ever seen. I was desperate for answers, for management strategies, for anything that might help me understand what was happening in my body and why.

What I received was a brief phone call, a recommendation for skin prick testing (useful for identifying specific allergens, perhaps, but notoriously unreliable and utterly inadequate for addressing systemic complexity) and essentially nothing else. No discussion of histamine intolerance (something I have only learned about recently). No guidance on environmental management. No explanation of how chronic allergen exposure creates a cascade of systemic inflammation. No education whatsoever.

This isn't just one doctor's oversight. It's emblematic of a profound deficiency in how modern medicine approaches allergic disease – a blind spot that has persisted throughout my entire life.

This same pattern of inadequate, even dangerous treatment began when I was just 21 months old. For an unknown duration, I was given a dangerous and destabilising pharmacological cocktail of sedative, stimulant and barbiturate for allergies/asthma. Today, no doctor would dare prescribe such a combination.

I was given three drugs at once: Ephedrine (a stimulant that speeds up the heart), Phenobarbital (a powerful sedative) and Clemastine (a sedating antihistamine). This combination was chaotic and dangerous – two drugs slowing down the brain whilst one revved up the heart, creating opposing effects that put enormous stress on my entire system.

Studies on Phenobarbital use in young children show clear developmental harm: lower IQ scores, impaired coordination and fine motor control and disrupted brain development. Whilst these effects are most obvious with long-term use, the damage – brain cell death and disrupted connections between neurons – begins with the very first dose.

The medical establishment's failure to acknowledge these dangerous past treatments leaves individuals to live with lifelong consequences whilst the profession faces none.