14 DAY TRIAL // Young Alexandra Allen from Utah, US, pictured next to this article, can't take a long bath or go swimming without having painful rashes develop on her skin. She can't even play sports or take part in any activities that might make her sweat.
This is because she is allergic to water, including the one present in the sweat her own body produces. To avoid witnessing her body being covered in rashes and other severe medical complications, she has to limit her exposure to water to quick, cold showers.
Her condition is not an allergy per se, specialists explain
17-year-old Alexandra Allen's official diagnosis is aquagenic urticaria, a medical condition most often described as an allergy to water. Still, specialists say that aquagenic urticaria isn't exactly an allergy.
True, its characteristic symptom is a painful skin reaction resulting from contact with water. However, aquagenic urticaria does not involve a sudden increase in histamine levels in the body, as is the case with other allergies that affect people's skin.
Although cases of aquagenic urticaria are few and far between - and many of them go undiagnosed - whatever investigations into this condition have so far been carried out have revealed that it's not just water in itself that harms people suffering from this condition.
Thus, the rashes and all the other symptoms associated with this disease can be made worse, depending on the water's temperature and on its concentration of compounds like fluorine and chlorine.
In extreme cases, aquagenic urticaria sufferers can experience anaphylactic shock. By the looks of it, it's older individuals that are most at risk. The condition is currently incurable.
The condition almost killed Alexandra when she was younger
Some time ago, when she had not yet been diagnosed with aquagenic urticaria, Alexandra and her family spent a whole day swimming and playing in the water at the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area. Following this trip, the girl was hospitalized with rashes, internal bleeding, and painful joints.
Now that she knows that she is suffering from this rare medical condition, the 17-year-old does her best to keep away from water and, as mentioned, only takes quick, cold showers. Long baths and swimming are out of the question for the young girl.
“It feels like your skin has been sandpapered down until there's only one layer left and it itches, but you can't itch it or it will break and burn and bleed,” the teenager described what coming into contact with water feels like to her in a recent interview.
“It's both emotionally strenuous and physically painful. You just feel like you've been dipped in a vat of acid, not for long, but for long enough to tear off a layer of skin,” she went on to explain, as cited by DM.
Since she was diagnosed with aquagenic urticaria at the age of 15, Alexandra Allen has learned to live with this condition and does no let it control her. In fact, she says that, at least these day, her allergy to water is quite manageable.