[ELI5] Why can we gain resistances to medicine, alcohol, poison, etc. but not so much for allergies or pollutants?
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The things you mentioned have **different mechanisms**.
**Medicine**
* Are you pertaining to antibiotic resistance? Basically, germs evolve in order to protect themselves from the medicine that’s “killing them”. A knife keeps on stabbing me? I wear bulletproof vest. A flame keeps burning me? I bring water to extinguish the cause of the flame.
**Alcohol**
* Continuous/routine ingestion of alcohol forces our body to adapt or become more efficient in removing the alcohol that we consume. This results to *tolerance.* One example is when our body begins to secrete more enzymes. These enzymes makes it easier and faster for alcohol to come out from our body.
Why did I mention these mechanisms? You cannot compare the the resistance/tolerance of medicines/alcohol with allergies because *they work in different ways, different causes, and have different approaches*. That should answer your first question.
**Moving on.**
Allergies are an **immune response** of the body against foreign substances because our bodies see them as harmful even if they are not. Some people get over their allergies, some people do not.
One way to get tolerance is through allergy shots which carefully exposes your immune system to these allergens in hopes that your immune system will finally realize that they are not a threat. With this, your body won’t overreact thinking that a mere dust is there to kill you.
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