I wanted to lower my cholesterol in a natural way. CholestOff uses plant sterols or Phytosterol to lower cholesterol. I started taking CholestOff around December of 2012. The outside weather was cold. I took the pills as it said in the usage directions till the weather started getting warm. One warm spring day in March I was out and about and sweating a bit. I noticed most of the day I had an itch on both of my inner thighs. I didn’t think anything of it and without check on it continued on with my day. At the end of the day I noticed football sized rashes on the inside of both of my thighs. I contacted my doctor and received a topical treatment. As March rolled on I started getting rashes on other places on my body. My wrists, on the sides of my upper torso, my back, the back of my legs, my knees, and my hands. When the fleshy part of my thumb would start to break out I was always upset because this was very painful, and lasted an entire day. When I went to Florida on April 9, 2012, I got very bad rashes on the sides of my body under my arms, and on my back. I called my skin doctor and he recommend Benadryl. This helped but, the rashes kept coming back. On April 7, 2012 I ended up in the hospital. In the middle of the night my bottom lip started to swell to painful proportions (normally, I look like this). I could barely speak and I checked myself into the hospital. I received injections of Benadryl, Methylprednisolone, and Famotidine. I believe I was also given Epinephrine. After several hours the swelling started to go down and I was able to go home. Afraid this could happen again, I asked my doctor if a prescription for Epipen would be a good idea. He said it was and I started carrying an Epipen wherever I went.

This is what it looked like when I broke out on my wrist. The symptoms of my rashs were itchy and warm. Depending on where the rash was it could be painful. On May 4, 2012 my upper lip started to swell up severely. I took Benadryl and waited this one out. It took over a day for the swelling to go down and for my speech to return to normal. On April 9, 2012 I went to see and allergist. He prescribed Zyrtec and Zantac. I was still on Prednisone at this point from my GP to treat my lip swelling. Over time the combination of Zyrtec and Zantac started to reduce the outbreaks. Eventually, I was able to stop taking medication, but from time to time I still have outbreaks. I was diagnosed with chronic urticaria. To this day I still break out in rashes, but it’s not as severe as it was in the past. This is my arm after the needle from a blood test triggered a reaction. On the container there are warnings about taking the pills if you are pregnant, but there is no mention of a rash as a possible side effect.

I did a bit of research in March of 2012 and found the above blog post. Seeing this made me feel a little better because I was not the only one to have this type of allergic reaction.

This is a study I recently found. General information about plant sterols.