Health and Well-Being(Supplement)-Your jewelry could be making you tired
Researchers at Sweden's Huddings University Hospital have found a link between chronic fatigue syndrome and an allergy to nickel — especially among women. Nickel is used to make everything from fashion jewelry to bra snaps and paper clips shiny and bright.
In the Swedish study of 50 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), 52% of the women had allergic reaction to nickel — far more than the 24% in the control group. The findings appeared in the May issue of Contact Dermatitis.
The publication explains that 50 CFS sufferers and 73 control subjects were patch-treated with eight metal allergens. According to the researchers, "we found an over-representation of allergies among CFS patients, which was not significant. However, allergy to nickel occurred in 36% of patients in the CFS group and in 19% of subjects in the control group. The high frequency of nickel allergy was more noteworthy in females in the CFS group than among female controls (52% and 24%, respectively). Similarly, in the males, the figures were 14% and 9%."
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