Allergies Explained

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. 

I’ve said that more than a few times in my life, usually when I’m fixing or building something. You know, “a little more glue here” or “a few extra screws there,” just to make sure it holds. After all, I’d rather be safe than sorry. Overdoing something isn’t always a good thing though.

Have you ever overdone or overreacted to anything? Well, sometimes our bodies do. That’s what an allergy is.  

Normal operations

Your body has it’s own military (the immune system) with millions of little soldiers (white blood cells) that are constantly watching, training, and fighting. It even has different specialized branches of it’s military, just like a country. Your body is under constant attack from enemies, such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other germs. It’s amazing that we do not get sick a lot more often than we do. It’s the times the the body’s military is weakened or overwhelmed that we get sick. 

Under normal operations, the body’s military identifies threats early and reacts by training up a specialized team of soldiers (cells) to watch for and react to that specific threat. Actually, this is how vaccines work.

Imagine this, the year is 1400 and you own a medieval castle. Locked away at the center of the castle is your grandma’s secret recipe for the world’s most delicious chocolate cake. Everyone wants the recipe, but you must protect it. So, you set up defenses including a moat, archers, a drawbridge, soldiers, etc. One day on the horizon you see an army of men with spears approaching to attack. No problem, as they approach the castle, the archers begin to attack by launching arrows to slow them down. Your archers will attack any enemy, they are your frontline. However, they also yell back to the soldiers waiting inside that the enemy has spears. Therefore, the soldiers that are trained in fighting against spears get ready and launch a successful attack while the soldiers trained in sword fighting stay behind until they’re needed. Congratulations, grandma’s recipe is safe.

However, what if the castle fighters overreacted to a small threat, or something that’s not even a threat at all?

An allergy is an overreaction.

The next day a salesman approaches your castle selling dinnerware to eat your cake with. The archers quickly realize this man is not a threat, and communicate that to the soldiers in inside the castle.

However, some mistaken soldiers hear “fighting bears” instead of “dinnerware.”  They freak out because no soldiers are trained against fighting bears! So, they gather a large team of soldiers and spend the next few weeks training and preparing for a potential fighting bear attack. 

Well, eventually the same salesman approaches again trying to get you to buy some more overpriced stuff. As before, the archers on the lookout yell back to the soldiers, “It’s just that dinnerware guy again!” Unfortunately, the mistaken soldiers hear “fighting bears” again. Except this time they’re ready for it! 

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Suddenly the drawbridge lowers and out come hundreds of soldiers rushing out to fight these “bears.” The attack is so swift and convincing that the entire castle becomes alarmed and joins the fight; archers are shooting flaming arrows lighting the ground red hot with fire, the moat floods with water and swells, and finally the catapults are launching snot rockets. There’s so much action and smoke you can barely breathe! Poor innocent salesman. But at least the recipe is safe!

An allergy is like the “bear fighting” soldiers. It’s your body making a really big deal out of nothing.

Whether it’s peanuts, dust, grass, or a simple bee sting, the body mistakenly thinks it’s under a large scale attack and launches a full scale response. The body’s way of fighting off things results in the symptoms of an allergic response; runny nose, sneezing, itching, swelling, and in severe cases trouble breathing. Luckily, allergies are often simply more annoying than serious, but some allergic responses can happen very fast and be life-threatening. Those with more serious allergies need to carry an Epi-Pen at all times for this reason. Epi-Pens are very effective at calling all the body’s soldiers back in line. 

How did I get allergies?

We are not born with allergies (typically). From birth, the immune system (the body’s military) studies and learns about our world. It identifies enemies and trains special teams of cells to fight them. Then, when it sees that specific enemy again, it’s ready to attack it quickly. This is very helpful against actual enemies (the flu for example). 

This means you can’t have an allergy to something the first time you encounter it. Your body’s immune system must encounter it to learn about it first. Then, in the case of an allergy, misidentify it as an enemy and begin prepping for a full scale attack next time it sees it. If you’ve ever had allergies or a specific allergic reaction, that was not your first time coming into contact with that item. You can develop an allergy to anything at anytime; however, they typically develop when we are young and the body’s military is seeing the world for the first time. 

There are also some items our bodies tend to commonly misidentify as a threat. Because of this we are now able to test for these and identify someone’s allergies (what the body has misidentified as an enemy) early on and treat the body’s overexcited military with a “chill pill” before it has a chance to unleash a full scale attack. 

So why does the body misidentify things as a “threat?”

Good question. The answer might be parasitic worms. Without going into too much detail, I think you’ll find it interesting that allergies only exist in well developed countries. For example, we don’t really find people in underdeveloped areas struggling with allergies. Areas with better health practices suffer more with allergies, ironically. No one actually knows, but we think this is because of improved hygiene (washing hands, clean food, etc). 

See, our body’s military (immune system) has a branch that is supposed to protect us against parasites, such as tapeworms. As a child encounters a tapeworm in an underdeveloped area, the immune system sees it and responds correctly, like the spear attack above. 

However, as hygiene improves children are no longer exposed to tapeworms. This is a good thing! But, since the body has never seen a tapeworm is has to guess what they look like. Often, it guesses wrong unfortunately and misidentifies something harmless as something it should fight against; such as peanuts.

This is what allergy shots attempt to correct. By introducing your body’s soldiers slowly and calmly to the mistaken enemy, the soldiers start to realize that it’s actually harmless.  

So, moral of the story is we need to give our children parasitic worms. 

Just kidding, but not completely…

I hope that helps you understand a brief overview of what an allergy is. Books upon books have been written about allergies; there’s even an entire branch of medicine dedicated to it. So there’s much more to learn, and even more we don’t know yet, but that should get you started.  

Want more specific details? Click here for an interesting paper on the relationship of parasites and allergies from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology.

Learn more, stay humble.