Like, is it when a small portion of a population has an adverse resction to something most of the species can handle just fine (i.e. a peanut allergy)? Or can it be a species thing? Like humans how get horribly itchy when the touch poison ivy, but other animal species eat the leaves and be just fine.
Would it be right to say that humans are allergic to poison ivy? If we’re not allergic, then is there another term for it?
Also, if it’s not an allergy, then where is the line drawn? I know there are a ton of people with pollen allergies, it seems pretty common. What percentage of the overall population makes an “allergy” a(n) [new term]?
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Yes, getting a rash from poison ivy is an allergic reaction.
The medical definition of an allergic reaction is a damaging immune response to an allergen.
Most people don’t have an allergic reaction response to their first exposure of urushiol (the allergen in poison ivy.) However, after being in exposed once, the body prepares an immune response and the next exposure causes the rash as the body tries to fight off the perceived threat of the allergen.
A good example of what is or isn’t an allergy is capsaicin the thing that makes chili peppers spicy. Capsaicin is a neurotoxin that binds to nerves triggering a pain sensation. That is not an allergy.
However there are people who are actually allergic to capsaicin. That means their immune response is triggered by capsaicin and the immune response causes inflammation and sometimes even difficulty breathing. For those people, the substance itself is both causing pain and the immune response is causing additional problems.
But most people don’t have a capsaicin allergy but capsaicin still causes pain even without the allergy.
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