What is it about pollen that makes people sick?
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It’s a foreign substance that is small enough to travel through the air. The “sickness” from pollen allergy is our immune system improperly considering the safe pollen to be an enemy.
The immune system is our body’s defense force. It evolved in a time when we could get parasites from our food and water along with the risk of bacterial, fungal, and virus infection. Things were not very clean before civilization.
But with modern sanitation, we have removed many of the threats to our bodies so the immune system doesn’t have much to do. They still are anxious to eliminate anything foreign to our bodies. If one of them accidentally classifies a pollen particle as an enemy, any future pollen particles also are labelled as an enemy.
And when an enemy is detected, the immune system starts the full immune response by expanding blood vessels (swelling, redness) and increasing discharge to flush the system (runny nose, coughing). These are great for fighting infections but terrible on your body when facing harmless pollen!
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