A Seoul content creator with extensive allergies joked that she has “37 new ways to die” after recently discovering new foods she’s allergic to.
Joanne Fan, 21, shares how she lives her life and travels the world as a highly allergic eczema sufferer, with her 19,000 Instagram and 81,000 TikTok followers.
“I grew up with the allergies, so I’ve never really felt like I’ve been missing out because I don’t know what I’m missing,” Fan told Caters Media Group.
“I’m allergic to all nuts and seafood. I just say 37 allergies because it’s my favorite number, but the reality is that it’s a lot higher.”
The lifestyle vlogger retested her allergies with a patch test at a doctor’s office last month, discovering several new allergens.
“Some fruits I didn’t think I was allergic to showed reactions on the backtest like grapefruit,” Fan explained, adding that her “more severe allergies caused a bigger dot reaction than the smaller ones — but they were still there.”
Fan’s video of her allergy test quickly amassed 4.6 million views on TikTok and 1.2 million likes on Instagram.
“I joked that I had new ways to die on my backtest video to make light of my condition,” she said, revealing that she’s not actually stressed about her allergies.
Living most of her life with these allergies, Fan can typically tell when she’s having a bad reaction.
“I can feel my flare-ups coming on before I start to turn red,” she noted.
“They usually start within 10 minutes of eating something I’m allergic to, and I’ll start scratching or find myself getting very hot.”
The worst part for Fan isn’t avoiding foods, it’s the eczema that accompanies her allergies.
“The hardest part about it all is how it affects my eczema rather than my diet — people see me and they are like, ‘What’s happened to your face? Why are you so red?’” Fan lamented.
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“It’s flared up pretty badly this year, and it’s really affected my confidence,” she added.
She shared that strangers online have left some hurtful messages.
“It’s only been online where people have had a bad reaction to my allergies — I’ve been told I shouldn’t reproduce even though my allergies aren’t genetic; my parents don’t have them,” Fan said.
She admitted that the negative comments initially caused her to stop filming her face — until her friends helped her overcome the shame.
“For a long time, I never spoke about my skin condition or showed people because I thought, ‘Nobody wants to see — everyone wants to see pretty skin,’ but then it came up with friends, and they were so interested,” Fan recalled.
“I thought about how many people there are in the world and that there had to be other people out there like me, so I decided to share my story to make them feel less alone. I’ve also learned a lot about managing my conditions, and it’s been so nice to share my tips online and get messages from people who they’ve helped.”
For example, she shared that she learned that staying hydrated helps her manage her eczema beyond just avoiding foods she’s allergic to.
She also eschews using products with active ingredients, excluding retinol, which promotes healthy, younger-looking skin.
With allergies, the body creates antibodies in response to a particular allergen it has identified as harmful.
The severity of an allergic reaction can range from minor irritation to anaphylaxis, which can be deadly.
Board-certified dermatologist Dr. Hamdan Abdullah Hamed noted that allergies can be “a big pain point for many people” for a variety of reasons.
“Although the mechanism behind specific food allergies is unknown, it’s best to take precautions to avoid life-threatening reactions,” Hamed advised to Caters.
