As you know if you have followed my posts on the topic, I have been experimenting with antihistamines to control my stomach and bowel pains connected with my diet and, in some strange way, with my CPPS too. I fall into that category of CPPS patient who has lots of allergies, a touch of what looks like Fibromyalgia or
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), problems with many foods and
strange symptoms all over the body (rashes, aches in joints etc). My CPPS started at about the same time I started waking in the wee hours of the morning with griping, grinding stomach pain. I started off using Maalox to quell this pain, but that didn't help at all really.
To cut a long story short, I eventually got control of my CPPS and went into remission by: using Quercetin, avoiding wheat and a few other key foods, not sitting all day, avoiding stress, and taking nutritional supplements. (The rest of my protocol is at this page:
http://www.chronicprostatitis.com/protocol.html )
Anyway, fast forward to the present: although my CPPS is no longer a big issue (occasional twinges, mostly after dietary indiscretion, or too much sitting), I still had a tremendous problem with my diet. The list of foods I could not eat without repercussions had grown to encompass almost all foods. I was left eating a small range of items (mostly chicken and a few vegetables - hospital food!).
Bananas, potato and onions, to give an example of the effects I faced, would cause such severe colon bloating and pain that I could not sleep. Nuts caused throbbing headaches. Wheat caused total exhaustion and depression (as well as being the
numero uno CPPS trigger). Corn caused a rash to appear on my face. Cranberries and Raspberries caused terrible stomach pain that would wake me from sleep, and also burn my bladder/prostate area. I could go on like this for several paragraphs, but I'm sure you get the idea. The symptoms appeared all over my body. I commented to my wife that it was as if life itself had turned against me, that I was being "pushed off" the planet, and I felt I was holding on by my nails, like a man holding on to the edge of a cliff. I often felt pretty desperate, let me tell you.
I could not shake the feeling that somehow the CPPS and my allergies and food intolerances were connected. But how?
All during the early, terrible years of CPPS in the early 1990s, the only one time I'd had relief was when I took a drug that was
a mixture of cortisone and an antihistamine. I had just a few tablets of this substance, but it gave me wonderful relief. For some reason I could not get more of this drug combo. A few years later, trying to replicate this relief, I took just plain cortisone (prednisolone), but to no avail. Maybe it was the antihistamine that helped and not the cortisone?, I reasoned. So I took the latest antihistamine (I forget the name), one that was supposed not to make you drowsy. No luck.
Fast forward to the present. I read about how people like Jill Osborne of the ICN had experienced a lot of success with hydroxyzine, and old-fashioned H1-receptor antagonist, first generation "hit you on the head" type antihistamine. It is supposed to work on nerves as well as histamine, and also alleviates anxiety. Not bad, I thought, I'll give it a whirl. It may help my food problems.
And, by the whiskers of Kurvi Tasch, it did!
I have now experimented by eating almost all of my "forbidden" foods and had only mild or no reactions. I hasten to add that I am only taking 25mg of Vistaril (hydroxyzine) a day, about 25% of an adult dose. This is a miracle to me, my friends -- I cannot tell you how much this means to me. It's like a door has been opened to life again.
On the negative side, the hydroxyzine, taken at night, caused me to wake the third day with a sharp, urgent pain in my bladder prostate area!
Oh cursed fate! Just my luck, I thought. Finally I find something to release me from the pains of food allergy and intolerance, and it causes my CPPS to flare! How can this be? I did some fast thinking and came up with my
"Allergy Theory of CPPS"©:
http://www.chronicprostatitis.com/forum ... .php?t=385
I believe this effect of the old class of antihistamines has caused most men with CPPS to avoid its use. I believe they all have this effect on us.
Thinking laterally
, I reasoned that the way to counteract the antihistamine was to use a smooth muscle relaxant like Hytrin. Seems logical, and my urologist friends did not object. Hytrin has a number of good things going for it:
http://www.chronicprostatitis.com/forum ... .php?t=237
It worked.
So that's where I am today. Yesterday I ate a whole lot of stuff that would have had me moaning with pain today, but I'm fine! I awoke this morning with very mild tightness in the bladder area from the antihistamine, but since I'm only taking 1mg of Hytrin at night I expect to be able to eliminate that too eventually as I increase the Hytrin dose.
I do not know if other antihistamines will work as effectively for me. I've learned that people can react differently to different things in unpredictable ways, for instance: although many men are helped hugely by quercetin, some aren't at all. So I cannot say if this regimen will help you, or whether any other antihistamines will help me. I already know that
Claritin / Clarinex did nothing for my food problems, and nor did
Seldane (Terfenadine) and some other antihistamines. So this area is a bit of a mystery -- probably some complex, genetically mediated chemistry at play here.
I am hoping, perhaps optimistically, that the blocking of all the histamine from my system may eventually lead to the cure of my CPPS. If it does, it means a large number of men may be able to access a total cure for the condition, using simple drugs.
If I fail to eradicate my CPPS completely, it still means I have discovered a novel way (antihistamines balanced with alpha blockers) of alleviating some of the pain, fatigue and distress that so often accompanies CPPS.
Õlé!
