What dietary taboos should you pay attention to when you have rhinitis?

In fact, there is no unified list of the core dietary taboos. The first one is always the food you eat that will definitely induce rhinitis. Individual differences can vary greatly. Two years ago, I met a patient who had been suffering from allergic rhinitis for 6 years. He ate seafood and iced drinks that everyone had told him not to touch, but nothing happened to him. He only touched a mouthful of mango, and he sneezed more than 20 times within five minutes, and his nose could flow to his chin. After checking the allergen, it turned out that he was severely allergic to mango, and he was not allergic to shrimp, crabs, or cold air. So for him, mango was the number one taboo, and other so-called "rhinitis triggers" did not need to be tabooed at all.

Speaking of this, someone must have asked, are the statements on the Internet that people with rhinitis should not eat spicy food, seafood, or cold food all wrong? Not really. There is a lot of controversy here. Different constitutions and different types of rhinitis have different taboos. For example, Western medicine generally believes that as long as there are no clear allergens, you can eat spicy or seafood. Especially for people who are not allergic, the high-quality protein in seafood can help the body repair mucous membranes. ； However, the Traditional Chinese Medicine Association believes that if you have chronic rhinitis of the deficiency-cold type and are usually afraid of cold and have runny nose when encountering cold, then eating too much cold foods such as seafood and spicy foods such as peppers may aggravate the symptoms. Both views are reasonable. There is no need to argue about right and wrong. You can eat what makes you feel comfortable and avoid it if you get sick.

Of course, this does not mean that all general reminders are completely useless. After all, the nasal mucosa of most rhinitis patients is in a relatively high-sensitivity state, and some dietary habits will indeed increase the likelihood of aggravating discomfort. For example, if you have sicca rhinitis or atrophic rhinitis, your nasal cavity is often so dry that it hurts, or even forms bloody scabs. Don’t eat spicy hot pot or deep-fried heavy food all the time. Otherwise, when you get angry, the moisture in your nasal mucosa will be drained even more, just like a sun-wrinkled plastic film. It will hurt at the slightest touch and bleed easily. Why bother? If you have vasomotor rhinitis and your nose becomes stuffy and runny whenever you drink ice or eat iced watermelon, then don’t always compete with your friends on who can drink iced milk tea faster in the summer. If you feel refreshed for a few minutes, you will be stuck for two hours, which is too bad.

Not long ago, there was a 10-year-old patient. His mother said that he had recurring rhinitis. After checking allergens, he was fine. After careful questioning, he found out that the child bought two packs of puffed food and several bags of fruit-flavored candies at the canteen every day after school. Later, he added a lot of flavor to these. I stopped using highly processed snacks with refined preservatives. Within a month, most of the child’s symptoms of nasal congestion were cured. Foods with high sugar content and many additives should be eaten as little as possible no matter what kind of rhinitis you have. After all, it will aggravate the inflammatory response of the mucous membrane and is of no benefit.

In fact, if you really want to talk about it, there are not so many dietary taboos for rhinitis. If you are really confused, just spend two weeks keeping a food diary. On a day when rhinitis occurs, go back and look at what you ate the day before. You can find your own "exclusive taboos" by trying a few times. You can compare it with the online list and don't dare to eat this or that. It's much more reliable.