No I'm not going to tell you that you're allergic to yourself or to your spouse. But you may be allergic to the perfumes, after shaves,or colognes used by your spouse. Room and car deodorizers, scented candles and the like are known to cause excruciatingly painful headaches, if you are allergic to the perfumes. Hair sprays and body lotions are major culprits too, if the perfume is strong. Even some laundry products have a perfume that is simply too strong.

The simplest way to determine if perfumes cause your headaches is for you to ask yourself- how you feel when you walk down the perfume or laundry detergent aisle in the grocery store. If it makes you feel headachy or uncomfortable then it could cause a major headache if you allow yourself to remain around the odor for any length of time. Do the odors feel like they go straight to your head?

If you occassionally get tiny little sore spots in your nostrils, the usual cause is a deodorizer, especially the ones people place in automobiles.

Artificial sweetners are also a major cause of headaches. Nutrasweet and Sacharin are the main ones. It's only been the last few years that restaurants began indicating which buffet products were made with artificial sweetners. Before that, people got headaches shortly after arriving home and it took a while to figure out that it was a food product.

Many times what you believe to be a food allergy , may only be an allergic reaction to an ingredient in the product rather than the product itself. That's the only way to explain why you may have a reaction one time and not the next time. Different manufacturers use different products in processing..

Another thing a lot of people have to deal with is Contact Dermatitus. This is an allergy to inexpensive metals such as zinc. Watch bands and eyeglass frames are the main things that cause a skin reaction. Wire eyeglass frames cause a breakout that looks very much like psoriasis, but if you look closely you'll see the break out follows the pattern of the eyeglass ear piece. The metal snap on your jeans can be very irritating, too, if you are allergic to zinc.

Latex is another culprit that many people are allergic to. It can actually burn the skin if it is allowed to remain in contact with your skin.

With all the allergic reactions to so many different things, headaches can be the most disabling.

If you suspect you're allergic to a perfume, hairspray or other product , simply don't use it for a while and see if you still continue to have problems.

Your doctor is the most knowledgeable in determining your allergies, but you can help him to make a more concrete diagnosis.

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