Things Change

Ocean life produces sulfur which helps make clouds come into being, so ocean-born clouds are sulfuric.

I spent a lot of years on the West Coast, as close to the actual coast as I could arrange for much of that time. I did so because, as I've said over and over on this site:

• CF is a salt-wasting condition.
• When you sweat out large quantities of salt, it drags OTHER minerals with it.
• The OTHER minerals you need tend to also be found in the ocean, so simply being on the coast helps you get the salt and other minerals you need.

I have left the West Coast. I thought I would never be able to do that in part because I have CF and need the salt and minerals and in part because the only "official"/medically recognized allergy I have is ragweed and the West Coast has less of that than the rest of the contiguous US.

But I'm more stable than I used to be and not in need of as much salt etc.

I also have an issue with sulfur and since leaving the coast concluded it wasn't just the awful apartment I was living in, it was also something about the area and sulfur in the coastal clouds is one possible explanation.

Secondarily, I looked up ragweed season and it seems to be a part of the year when I am relatively OK -- August-November. I usually find spring and early summer more problematic.

So it's possible -- even likely -- that "You have a ragweed allergy AND Kansas is ragweed central" may not be the explanation for why I was so sick when I lived in Kansas.

And also something I have touched on before on this site: parasitic infections make allergies worse. I generally react less allergically to things than I used to, presumably because my trypanosomas infection is more under control.

So to my surprise and contrary to things I have written here in the past, I have relocated to someplace with more ragweed than the West Coast. And I seem to be doing a lot better already in spite of traveling generally being hard on me and other confounding factors that I knew would kick my butt.