Why are people allergic to things?

Answer 1

Why are people allergic to things?
Allergens are things, such as pollens from trees or hair from animals, that trick our bodies into thinking we are fighting a cold or virus. These allergens make people who are prone to allergies have symptoms like runny noses, watery eyes and coughs. Not everyone, however, is prone to allergies. But if you are, allergies can be a pain in the neck. Who wants to walk around always feeling like they have a cold?

i got this off a kid site

Answer 2

Allergies are an accute immune reaction to particles in your environment.

Dust, pollen, and other particles are all foreign to your body. As such, upon enterring the body (through the skin, nose, eyes...etc) the body recognizes them as foreign. When it recognizes this it tries its hardest to contain, eliminate, and suppress the foreign object.

This is acheived through many ways. In the nose, you have an explosive exhalation to try and force the particles out. We normally call it a sneeze. In the eyes, you tear up, to wash the particles away. And pretty much everywhere you have an inflamation reaction. This reaction is the heat and swelling up of the area in which the allergen collects. The redness is from the swelling of capillaries with blood around the area. The itchiness is from irritation caused by the release of chemicals from your mast cells and the destructive chemicals of your neutrophils and possible the foreign substance. The heat at the site is part of an effort to make the area less succeptable to infection.

The reason that some people have a harder time dealing with this is either an overactive immune system, or a system that for some reason or another never learned to deal with allergens. There is a period, different for different people during childhood, and sometimes into adulthood when your body adjusts to allergens. Some of this time is during the breastfeeding period. As immunities and immune system information is passed from mother to child via breast feeding, abnormalities during breast feeding can increase the risk of the child developing allergies. Or, some can be the result of a genetic disorder.


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Answer 3

People make different types of antibodies (AB), the most common is IgG which is the main AB involved in a immune reaction. It usually cause a specific response by a specific cell.

Another type of AB is IgE, which when activated cause the general inflammatory response (ie swelling, increase mucus).

Sometimes when people encounter things, instead of producing IgG, they produce IgE. This mostly happens in a immune system. Thus the next time they encounter the same thing the IgE AB triggers a inflammatory response, which presents as a allergic reaction.

Answer 4

People have done a good fairly good job of explaining the reaction due to allergens, but not why we have them. One theory, that makes a lot of sense to me is an overactive immune system. Think about it, how long has medication been around, 80 years since penicillin was discovered?. How did people survive before then? througout our evolution the human body has developed a very good immune system. This immune system used to be kept very busy fighting off various infections. Now however, it is helped immensely by antibiotics, but it is still attuned to being "busy" defending the body. As such it now "attacks" things that it normally would not have as it was too busy fighting off real infections. So now, since there isn't as many bacteria as it is used to fighting, it has started to attack things like pollen. Get what I'm saying? Take care!

Answer 5

Allergies are caused by allergens, supposedly harmless to your body. In some people's body, a certain kind of allergen will trigger a kind of reaction, causing the body to think the harmless allergen as an intruder. It will attack it, causing the many allergic reactions. Common allergens are pollen, animal dander, and dust mites. Pollen and animal dander only infect sesonally, while dust mite allergies happen year-round.

Answer 6

everyone is made a little different and there are various things that upset how each of us run, these various things cause allergic reactions. Now i dont see that there is a huge purpose to allergic reactions, but they surely do happen.

Answer 7

Allergies are abnormal immune system reactions to things that are typically harmless to most people. When you're allergic to something, your immune system mistakenly believes that this substance is harmful to your body.

Answer 8

Most cases are due to digestive failures. Some food molecules are not attacked by digestion enzymes and they have accumulative effects and this build up interacts with immune system and its response is a rash, diarrhea, throat closure, shock or worse.
Same happens with dust, feces, hairs, etc. it's our bodies incapabilities to deal with them what makes us sick.

Answer 9

certain chemicals in it