[ELI5] Why can we gain resistances to medicine, alcohol, poison, etc. but not so much for allergies or pollutants?
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A lot of medicines and drugs have an effect on your body because they attach to specific types of receptors that your cells use to communicate with one another. Your cells can change how many of these receptors they have based on how many of those receptors are binding to the substance you’re taking in. This is a normal part of how your body regulates communication between cells/between body systems. If you take something artificial that binds to those types of receptors, then over time, the number of receptors you have will change and you’ll need to take more of that drug to have the same effect.
But allergens and pollutants don’t work by binding to the normal receptors that cells use to communicate with one another. With allergens, your immune system is recognizing the substance as a threat, and there isn’t an inbuilt system for the body to dial that immune response up or down the way it does for the receptors that cells use to communicate with one another.
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