How come the body can’t build up an immunity to whatever the body is allergic to? Especially if you keep getting exposed by what you are allergic to?
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That’s the thing, though. Allergies are a malfunction of the immune system. When you are allergic to something, your immune system is responding to something it shouldn’t, causing an unnecessary inflammatory response and all the unpleasantness that comes with it.
The allergy IS immunity. The issue is that your immune system raises a false alarm and starts hurting you from overreacting.
Imagine your immune system like a cop: do you want to be very careful who you arrest? Then you sometimes don’t catch someone and they end up murdering people. Or do you want to be more thorough, then you catch all the murderers but also sometimes an innocent person.
So it’s a tradeoff. People could have less allergies, but then there could be diseases your immune system doesn’t fight before it’s too late, wich is potentially lethal.
There is also some evidence that our lifestyle makes allergies worse. We’re not exposed enough to pathogens to keep our immune system busy with real problems, so it gets overly careful.
>Especially if you keep getting exposed by what you are allergic to?
That’s possible, but takes some time, and if the allergy is serious you might be dead before your body gets used to it.
Doctors can do a careful exposure to the allergene while monitoring the patient to desensibilize them. The effect doesn’t last forever though.
Allergies are an overreaction of your immune system. You can’t build immunity because it’s already on overdrive. But in some cases, you can desensitize it by exposing your immune system to small quantities of the allergens and over time, your immune system can become used to it and stop overreacting.
You will build up an immunity over time. That’s how allergy shots work. The problem is that most allergens are things we rarely come into contact with. For instance a certain tree might release its pollen for 2 weeks a year. Whatever immunity you started building up will be lost during the 50 weeks until it releases pollen again.
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