I have anaphylaxis via sesame & my only symptom (and of course the most dangerous) is my airways closing up, making it difficult to swallow anything for the next 24 hours. I understand that an allergic reaction is just the body releasing antibodies for a ‘non-threat’ but why does the body decide to close airways? This never happens when you are infected with a virus, so why does it occur during anaphylaxis?
In: Biology
An allergy is not just a normal immune response to a false target. It’s an overreaction by only one branch of your otherwise quite complicated immune system.
If you have an infection like a cold, your immune system mounts a coordinated system-wide assault with all its branches.
If you have an allergy, only one branch of your immune system (histamine signaling) has a overreaction and mounts a localized solo-attack. One of histamine’s goals is to cause inflammation, which gives the rest of the immune system better access to attack to infection and repair damage. This causes swelling.
So, when you have an allergic reaction, your body doesn’t decide to close your airways. Histamine decides by itself it’s time to flush out the “infection” and the only way Histamine knows to do that is by causing inflammation which leads to swelling. If you’re unfortunate, that swelling happens to be in places you really don’t want to swell up… like places near your airways.
Note that histamine signaling isn’t only present in allergies. There are other infections, like an infected wound or pinkeye that cause a localized histamine response with swelling.
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