So I know that in an anaphylaxis response we give Adrenaline or epinephrine for USA friends. My understanding is that we do this to counteract the body’s response to an allergen.
So we’re stopping our body overreacting and killing us.
So what’s actually dangerous about the allergen? Either now or way back when this response was ingrained into our DNA… like is it to avoid an upset stomach of a peanut? To stop nausea following a shellfish?
In: Biology
There isn’t anything that’s inherently dangerous about allergens. Some can be good (e.g. water! yes, some people are allergic to water) and some can be bad (e.g. poison).
Generally, your body doesn’t know any of that. All it knows is, there’s something new here that I haven’t encountered before. When the usual materials it uses to digest / absorb / deal with it aren’t working, your body thinks, “OK, this thing is trying to kill me, I’m going to fight it to death!”
> So what’s actually dangerous about the allergen?
Usually nothing. It’s just a foreign body (or one of your organs in which case you get a fun case of autoimmune disorders) and for some reason your immune system miscategorized it from the “eh, don’t care” category to the “destroy or die trying” category.
Nothing. If the allergen was harmful it wouldn’t be an allergen. Allergies are the immune system malfunctioning.
Generally? Nothing.
When we’re talking about those things like shellfish & nuts & tomato and all the other things that 99.99% of the population have no problems with, it’s not an evolutionary response to a potential threat or anything of the like, it’s our body’s immune system glitching out and responding to something it doesn’t need to, like a shitty antivirus program falsely flagging MS Word as malware.
Nothing is dangerous about the allergen. However, your immune system misidentifies the proteins in the substance as a pathogen and triggers an immune response to ‘protect’ your body.
The immune response is what is dangerous – it massively overreacts and triggers swelling in the throat and lungs, resulting in suffocation.
Nearly all allergens are proteins or substances that bind with proteins when they enter the body and that’s what triggers the immune response. It’s still not clear why certain allergens cause different people to have reactions but are harmless to most other people.
Unfortunately it’s an incredibly complicated question, hundreds of substances have been identified as allergens and there is no clear or definitive single factor that links all or even most of them.
Meanwhile there are a number of theories as to why allergies exist, and they include to try and avoid or protect against dangerous substances, but the sheer volume and variety of reactions makes it hard to pin down any one theory. It’s more than likely a combination of many factors.
The dangerous thing about an allergen is that it looks enough like something that’s actually dangerous – like a virus or a bacteria – for some people’s bodies to confuse it for one, and think it needs to go on high alert to defeat it.
That’s why many allergens have proteins in them – really what you’re reacting to is a particular protein that is in that thing.
But of course, the allergen isn’t actually dangerous. Only your body’s reaction to it is.
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