ALLERGIES: THE ALLERGIC REACTION
AllergiesIt’s no coincidence that most allergies, especially adult onset allergies, start after a bout of glandular fever, flu, hepatitis, surgical operation or crash diet. All of these factors are stressors that leave the body tired and the immune system depressed. The exact mechanisms by which allergic reactions take place are enormously complex and, for the main part, poorly understood. What is clearly recognised and agreed upon though, is that an excess of histamine released from the basophils, blood platelets and mast cells causes an inflammation at the point of release, and that this inflammation gives rise to the definitive symptoms of an allergy.
The allergy takes its name from the tissue the inflammation takes place in. If the inflammation takes place in the windpipe, it’s called asthma; in the nose, rhinitis, sinusitis or hayfever. Histamine inflammation in the joints gives rise to arthritis and in the eyes to conjunctivitis. Because histamine can be released into any tissue of the body, the symptoms of allergy are many and varied. Many people experience allergic reactions in more than one tissue at a time.
Because we’re all so biochemically unique, we can manifest our allergies in slightly different ways. For instance, histamine inflammation in the brain can give rise to depression in some people, poor concentration in others and dizzy spells, drowsiness and fatigue in others. Histamine inflammation in the skin can manifest as eczema in some, psoriasis in others, hives in others and adult acne in many others.
The difference between a normally reacting immune system and an over-reacting immune system is that an over-reacting immune system wants to protect us against foreign bodies that are not normally life threatening. Pollens, grasses, dusts, dust mites, moulds and foods do not pose the threat to us that viruses, bacteria and internally growing fungi do.
What causes an immune system to become over-reactive? Stress of any sort will do it. The stresses of cold, trauma, over-work, over-exercise; over-socialising, overcommitment, significant loss and infection (bacterial, viral or fungal) can all do it. Especially if you’ve experienced two or more of them over a prolonged period of time. Prolonged stress makes us tired. When the body is tired, every one of its 60 trillion cells, including those of the immune system, is tired. When we’re tired, we tend to be more sensitive than usual and over-react to things that wouldn’t normally bother us. We become short tempered and intolerant. We perceive things negatively and flare up at imagined insults and react aggressively to imagined challenges. So it is with the cells of the immune system. When the body is stressed and tired, the immune system flares up at things that don’t normally pose a threat to us and an excess of histamine is released. Not all tired immune systems react this way—there has to be a genetic predisposition to over-reaction before the allergic mechanism can be triggered.
Singularly, the greatest stress the cells of the immune system (and indeed the rest of the body) can experience, is the withholding from them of essential nutrients (oxygen, water, vitamins, minerals, protein, essential fatty acids, carbohydrate). In addition to making a cell tired, nutrient deficiencies create imbalances in its metabolism. An unbalanced metabolism gives rise to unbalanced behavior by the cell. This erratic behavior of the immune system cells that gives rise to allergic reactions is a good example of metabolic imbalances created by nutrient deficiency.
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