[ELI5] Why can we gain resistances to medicine, alcohol, poison, etc. but not so much for allergies or pollutants?
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We actually can for allergies, and that’s how allergy shots work. They expose you to teeny tiny doses of the allergen until your immune system learns to stop panicking from it.
Pollutants are a different story and that term encompasses such a huge variety of chemicals it’s hard to generalize. Often they do slow, cumulative damage that your body can’t repair or the pollutants can accumulate in tissues like your fat where your body isn’t good at filtering them out. Most modern-day pollutants are things our bodies had no evolutionary experience with, so we’re just not prepared to respond well physiologically.
I used to get seasonal allergies to pollen and such.. horrible congestion and itchy eyes etc.
Went away after I turned mid 20s.
I ate some raw unpasteurized honey about 3 or 4 PB and honey sandwiches a day for a few weeks…
Horrendous allergies in middle of winter… finally figured out it was the honey and it took a week or two to fully clear up.
Throat was closing mouth breathing so congested eyes burning I was so confused.
Lol
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.
The ONLY allergy medicine that gives me any relief is Benadryl…name or store brand. I’ve tried almost every over the counter allergy medicine available and it’s no dice. We have a dog and a cat and I’m not allergic to either, it’s pollen 100 percent. Some days are better than others; some days I’m sneezing, swollen, face is red etc. other days not even a sniffle. I’ll never understand it. At night my nose straight up closes up and I wake up snoring, dry mouth from not being able to breathe through nose, waking my wife up snoring. It’s so tiring but I don’t have medical insurance so I’m copping the best I can. I’m legit on my third dose of Benadryl and real Sudafed today hoping I can fall asleep soon.
medicine and alcohol work on the receptor system and the receptor system has a mechanic called tollerance. poison is a bit different because no poison is the same.
Allergies are related to food or stuff in the air. The air stuff is mostly also food related.
You can stop an allergie by not eating or drinking the food or not being exposed to the pollen or whatever the allergy is. Allergie is basically an auto immune reaction.
So its very different.
my thoughts, humans are most resistant to elements ingested in small amounts on a regular basis. “small amounts” can be subjective to the individual based on parentage, environment, and personal history etc…example – my younger brother (an idiot by many standards) was at one time, allergic to peanuts, however, after eating peanut butter cups for years, now suffers no allergic reaction to peanuts.
I’m allergic to pollen and grass.
Back when I was a kid, my eyes would glow red from how irritated they were, I remember coming home from school, only to lie down for two hours with a cold wet towel placed over my eyes, so the swelling and irritation would go away. Not even medication was helping. At around 17 – 18 years, I had an absolute peak where I was basically suffocating just being outside for longer periods of time. My doc suggested I either stay home, or actually suffocate.
Now, at 28, I barely know I’m allergic. I get some mild irritation when a lot of pollen is in the air, if it hasn’t rained for some time, but I generally need to do nothing and it goes away in 5 minutes. That’s it.
Based on personal observation, people get more resistant to things they’re allergic to.
I think you could but like the other things people take in smaller doses where as with allergies people take an almost immediately life threatening dose and swear off it forever… making them just as vulnerable as the first time they are exposed…
Because there’s a completely different mechanism behind them.
Your body gains resistance to certain medicine and other substances by learning to break them down quicker or decreasing the amount of cell receptors that bind them. These are usually small molecules that don’t have immunogenic potential.
An allergy is an immune reaction which is a much more complicated mechanism. The immune system can only respond to larger molecules like proteins and sometimes it does that inadequately, which is what an allergy is. Because it thinks the allergen is dangerous, it strengthens its reaction to it every time it comes across it.
It’s a bit more complicated than that because oral allergen therapy CAN decrease your allergy. The immune system is incredibly complex and still far from fully understood but this is the basic concept.
All very different mechanisms.
Medicines/poisons are processed via the liver and other organs. Therefor there’s time to grow those filtration cells.
Allergic reactions is simply a mall security guard taking their job too seriously. Some grow out of it; some get worse reactions.
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