Allergies and antihistamines ruined my sex life

Especially at this time of year, hayfever is in full force and a lot of you are probably popping the antihistamines to combat it. But those antihistamines could be impacting your sex life in a seriously negative and confusing way and you probably haven’t realised. Well, you’ve noticed the effect, but you probably haven’t figured the cause. To explain it, I’m going to tell you a story that seems kind of dumb at first, but when you think about it, it’s not really. Despite what the laughs of other people who I’ve told this story to might suggest.

I used to get really bad hayfever. I was taking antihistamines on a daily basis, sometimes up to two a day, which I know goes against what it says on the packet, but it was my doctor’s idea, so it must have been fine. This was a few years ago, and I was seeing this guy. We used condoms, but I always found sex with him painful. It was an itching, burning sort of pain, that you might attribute to an allergic reaction – it was a lot like how it feels when I wear fabric plasters (which I am actually allergic to), but y’know, worse, probably due to location. Based on this, I very reasonably came to the conclusion that I was allergic to latex. So we switched to the FYI-really-freaking-expensive latex-free condoms. Despite changing, I still had some of the pain, so I saw a couple of doctors to try and understand why – but they could never explain it.

Fast forward a couple of years. We’d been broken up for ages and my hayfever hadn’t been bad for a while, so when I started seeing a new guy I wasn’t taking antihistamines. And no pain ever. This inspired an alternate theory about the cause of the pain being due to a lack of skill from the ex, which I’m not going to debunk, but there was a real medically-related cause that we’re building to here. So over the last year I’ve come into contact with latex by accident occasionally, through costume parties and the flu jab and cleaning jobs and such. Slowly the doubt crept in about my latex allergy – maybe it wasn’t a serious allergy, or maybe there was a different reason and I’d jumped to conclusions. Which seems to be true. Through the careful study of academic journals – and totally not from reading Cosmo – I came to discover that the more-likely reason that explains everything is to do with my previous antihistamine usage.

Most Read

I’ve just realised that three cast members from Celebrity Traitors were in Game of Thrones

The Celebrity Traitors rules explained, as Richard E Grant immediately let slip he’s a Traitor

As Christa Pike’s execution fails, her accomplice boyfriend is living a totally different life

Supposedly, it’s all to do with the way that they work. Much like cold and flu medications, antihistamines attack the symptoms instead of the actual problem. So to stop the running nose and all that nasty stuff, they work by drying out mucous membranes, like those in the nose. You know where else has mucous membranes? The vagina. They’re how it self-lubricates. But antihistamines can’t distinguish between the ones in your nose and the ones in your vagina.

And, as it probably wasn’t mentioned during sex-ed at school, unlubricated sex can be very painful and can cause micro-tears. It can also increase the odds of getting STDs and increase the odds of the condom breaking due to increased friction. Basically, it’s a whole barrel of laughs.

So antihistamines + sex = unlubricated sex = bad. Who’d have thought it? And thinking about it, it might be a shout to skip the lemsip in your sex pre-game too, although if you’re taking that, odds are you are not going to be in the mood anyway.  But basically, if your hayfever’s bad, stock up on lube alongside the antihistamine tablets.

And for anyone who’s concerned (I estimate zero people, but you never know), I have returned to the life of someone who doesn’t believe they have a latex allergy, which is not hugely different. I’m going to get an allergy test soon to confirm, but I’m pretty much certain. Don’t know what the bloody hell it is in plasters that’s a problem though if it’s not latex.