My first ‘allergy’ experience: do I now avoid this plant forever?
Nope. Because Nature is not our enemy, something else is
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Hi! This is Leyla from A Day Well Spent, a newsletter about purposeful living.
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The 15 day course of steroids I was prescribed for the acute contact dermatitis reaction I had to some kind of plant, finished yesterday.
My face is now completely back to normal, to the extent where I can even use my homemade face cream again, rather than the pharmaceutical cream the dermatologist prescribed (the main ingredient of which is mineral oil, so I was keen to get off that quickly).
The skin on my cheeks and around my eyes has returned to being soft, silky and hydrated again – I’m delighted.
The backs of my hands are no longer itchy and inflamed and are now in healing mode. They still need some time to fully recover but are well on their way. Same for my ears which are still a little dry and rough to the touch.
My wrists are the most stubborn eczema sites. I intend to continue applying mild topical steroid ointment for another week or so before moving off them completely.
My first experience of an ‘allergic reaction’: the story so far
This all started on 31st August, after a fun grape harvesting experience I attended with a friend, followed by me picking some figs from The Land.
I spent the day in a t-shirt with my arms fully exposed. Because, why wouldn’t you. That evening I knew something was up – a rash of bumps was beginning to show on the insides of my forearms, my eyelids felt dry and a bit puffy and my ears were hot and red.
But the contact dermatitis reaction was a delayed one according to the dermatologist, which means the fire didn’t really get going until 24-48 hours after the event.
And once it did, it burned fiercely.
It started to ‘generalise’, meaning the eczema rashes were beginning to show up in places that didn’t even have contact with any plants. My hands especially got so bad – the skin so thickened and sore and shredded – that I was struggling to bend at the wrist or knuckles.
After nine days of trying to deal with these gradually escalating symptoms on my own, with various natural and herbal products I happened to have to hand (some of which actually worsened the reactions), I finally visited a dermatologist recommended to me by my architect.
The office initially said the doctor was fully booked. Then they took one look at my face — that had ballooned into a caricature-cross between an Avatar character, minus the blue skin, and someone recovering post double eyelid surgery — and said, ‘Can you come in today? The doctor has made room for you because – it’s an emergency.’
Hence the prescription of oral steroids to extinguish the fire from within.
I am not a person who suffers from allergies. And I don’t really get sick.
Other than mild hay fever I used to experience during the autumn (mushroom spores as opposed to pollen), which randomly completely stopped a few years ago, I am not allergic to, or have an intolerance to, anything that I am aware of.
My body also generally doesn’t ‘overreact’ to things – distant lands, the Amazon rainforest, high altitudes, extreme cold, extreme heat, humid air, dry air, insect bites, street food, local tap water – it seems to adapt to most situations with relative ease.
I caught up with my agent on the phone this week and in response to him asking how I’ve been, I replied with, ‘Well, I’ve actually been quite unwell.’
‘But you famously never get sick!’ he replied.
When I published how not to catch a cold in November 2023, it had been one year since my last cold. Since then, I’ll say there has been one occasion where I’ve had something which could loosely be described as a very mild cold, but it came and went within 24 hours.
So you could say I have essentially been cold-free for almost three years now. Which is a pretty good track record.
This is all to say – as someone who is fortunate and endlessly grateful to be in general good health with little to no ailments – experiencing this reaction with the intensity I did, was an unexpected and humbling experience.
The grapevine or the fig tree – which is trying to maim me?
When I explained to the the dermatologist the series of events that had lead to me seeing her, she concluded that I had likely reacted to fig tree sap.
No, not the figs! I picked some from the very same tree just a couple of weeks before. And I’ve picked from so many fig trees over the years, both domesticated and wild.
(btw DYK fig tree sap is caustic and considered a powerful skin irritant? More on this to come…).
But wait, plot twist.
With the heinous fig tree securely sectioned off in my mind as the culprit for my recent woes, last Friday I went picking some more grapes (it’s harvest season), this time wearing a shirt with long-sleeves (albeit rolled up) and fingerless gloves to protect my recovering hands.
By the evening, I had a new rash all up my arms.
So it wasn’t the fig tree, it was the grapevines!
(Note: new arm rash has since died down and almost completely gone – remember I was still on the course of steroids, which I think helped.)
I don’t believe I’m now “allergic to grapevines”
Based on these separate reactions to two recent exposures to grapevines, one might understandably choose to never step foot inside a vineyard again.
Should I cower in the face of ripening bunches? Should I live in fear of this ancient and wise plant?
It’s difficult to avoid grapevines when you now live in rural Portugal (there’s a vineyard on the other side of the dirt track where we’re building the house, for example).
Plus, I don’t intend to exclude them from my life anyway.
I understand an allergy can suddenly appear out of the blue one fine day when a person has never experienced it before. And I absolutely appreciate people have a really hard time with allergies and some can even be deadly.
But I know my body quite well and whilst I could be wrong, I just don’t believe I’ve suddenly “developed an allergy to grapevines”.
I’ve picked grapevine leaves endless times before; there was one growing over a neighbour’s fence back in the UK. And I’ve romped around vineyards on many an occasion.
I believe what I experienced was a combination of factors meeting in a perfect storm. As multifactorial causation states, illness is rarely due to a single cause.
A single exposure or genetic predisposition is usually not enough to cause an illness alone but it’s instead an interplay of genetic, environmental, social and behavioural factors.
That’s what I believe happened here.
My theory about what happened to me
First for context, my history with eczema
I used to suffer from it mildly as a kid and young adult like so many others and in the usual places – backs of knees, inside elbows, hands and fingers.
As an adult I rarely experience eczema, just the occasional little rough patch on a finger here or there. I find consuming too much unfermented dairy i.e. milk can cause patches on hands to re-surface.
Fermented dairy i.e. yoghurt, cheese, kefir is no problem for me. I guess because they contain less lactose, plus the probiotics in fermented foods improve gut health, which is where 70% of our immune systems live anyway.
I actually made this connection between eczema and unfermented dairy only in recent times — during one of our winters spent in Buenos Aires.
I don’t usually drink milk as it comes (not for any particular reason other than I prefer to consume fermented versions of milk because they’re better for you — for breakfast I have homemade kefir with homemade granola).
I started enjoying a daily cappuccino from our favourite coffee shop and after a few days, noticed a patch of eczema emerging on a finger. I put the two and two together, switched to oat milk cappuccinos and the eczema went.
Ta daa.
July 2025: a stress flare up of eczema on my wrist
A patch of eczema on my wrist manifested in the weeks leading up to our big move from London to Portugal. I reckon this was a stress flare-up which makes absolute sense.
I was running on fumes with minimal sleep and the to do list felt overwhelming most days (remember the insane packing palava?).
This means my immune system was compromised and dysregulated, which led to it overreacting and searching for the weakest link in my body to make itself known – the inflammatory condition that was this eczema patch on my wrist.
This patch was extremely stubborn, nothing was having an effect, neither natural products nor a mild topical steroid ointment. In retrospect everything is clear and it is now obvious to me that the patch persisted because the cause of the problem had not yet been addressed; the stress of moving.
Late August: the grape and fig picking day
It was an early alarm and the day started off cool and cloudy; everyone arrived in a light jacket. But the sun soon appeared and I was down to a t-shirt; my forearms were exposed and had not been moisturised since the night before, so were likely also a bit dry in general.
Like many plants, grapevines undergo significant biochemical changes during the ripening process including increasing the production of something called pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins, both in the leaves and in grape skins.
These proteins are part of the plant’s defence mechanism against fungi, insects, and perhaps also humans trying to pick them. Some of these proteins can be potent allergens that trigger contact dermatitis.
After the grape picking I then went to The Land next door to collect some figs. The tree was absolutely covered in dust from the road and because the best fruit are always just out of reach, I was basically climbing into the canopy and getting covered in the dust plus some fig sap, no doubt.
Existing wrist eczema + general un-moisturised arms + harsh sun + rubbing up against grapevines peak harvest time + covering arms in road dust + a sprinkling of fig tree sap = asking for trouble.
Mid September: re-exposure to grapevines
For allergic contact dermatitis to occur, your immune system needs to be sensitized to the allergen first. I reckon my pre-existing eczema and compromised skin barrier likely made me more susceptible to this sensitization.
The eczema likely provided an easy entry point for the plant’s ripening-related proteins during that first exposure, which then reacted with my immune system, which then learned to recognise them as an allergen.
So when I went grape picking again last week, my body was already primed to react, resulting in the new eczema rash I experienced.
This all happened because I allowed myself to get stressed
In summary, I believe that had that existing patch of eczema not existed, I would not have reacted to these grapevine plants in the way I did, if at all.
Whilst it would be easy for me to now claim ‘I have an allergy to grapevines!’ and avoid them forever more, I feel this would be reductionist, not necessarily true and unnecessary.
In my opinion — which is based on 0% medical authority and 100% on my intuition — this happened simply because I allowed myself to get stressed in the first place, all those weeks ago.
This compromised my immune system, which caused the wrist eczema, which then allowed all the rest to happen.
It’s not the plant’s fault. Nature is not our enemy.
I can’t help but wonder if many of the allergies and intolerances so many of us experience today are not because are bodies are broken or ‘don’t work properly’.
I believe that actually, all our bodies are infinitely wise and given the right conditions, would work brilliantly.
These symptoms — allergies, intolerances and much of sickness in general — are the language our bodies use when they want to communicate with us that something. is. not. right, when balance has been lost.
I believe the something is largely our toxic environments and the often impossible lifestyles we lead.
I will of course exercise caution as my skin continues to recover and I will avoid grapevines during this time.
But once my skin is back to full, uncompromised health, I have no intention of avoiding this plant. I’ll reintroduce it gradually and take it from there.
Stress is the worst and the cause of so much illness in the world.
Lesson learnt: Do not let anyone or anything take your peace!
‘It is in times of sickness that I am often most in awe of my body.’
The above quote comes from the public thank you I wrote to my body last year. The essay is a declaration of gratitude to my body and acknowledgement of how mind-bendingly awesome and wise it is.
As is your body. As are all of our bodies.
The same thing applied this time around. I was in awe of what my body was doing; my immune system responding to what it perceived to be a threat.
Thanks to this whole ordeal, I now have a new found appreciation for healthy, hydrated, soft and supple skin, where perhaps I took that for granted before.
So it hasn’t been in vain.
I have vowed to pay even more attention to my skin. I already make a killer intensive night cream which includes jojoba oil, avocado oil, olive oil, shea butter, frankincense essential oil — which my face loves.
But I now realise I probably don’t look after my hands or neck enough, so I’ll be taking my skincare routine to another level.
I’m currently doing lots of research to create a completely natural homemade serum for problem areas that will help improve elasticity and boost collagen production, with plant extracts that — mimic retinol!
There are plants that do that, how cool! Plants are amazing!
I will of course share my findings with you once I’ve made it and tried it out for a few weeks.
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As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this piece!
What would you do in my situation — draw the same conclusion as me or declare an allergy to grapevines?
And tell me your own stories around allergies and intolerances.
Have you ever had an acute reaction to something?
Do you “have allergies” and if so, how do you manage them?
Do you avoid your allergens entirely?
Has anyone tried training their immune system to strengthen its defence against an allergen (allergen-specific immunotherapy (AIT))?