Allergies affect many people worldwide. In the UK one in 200 people suffer from a nut allergy and as many as 2,000,000 people suffer from food allergies in general. A further 1 in 100 people suffer from a coeliac disease which is a staggering amount of people.
Allergies can cause big impacts on people's lives, and they don't happen without a reason. How do they occur? Allergies occur when your immune system thinks a substance is dangerous to the body so it produces lots of antibodies which cause cells to release a chemical into the blood known as histamine. Histamine then causes your reaction or the symptoms to start. These symptoms tend to be present in the nose, lungs, throat, sinus, the lining of the stomach and the skin. Some can be a lot more severe than others and sometimes having an allergic reaction or having an allergy to something can trigger asthma. A few common examples include sneezing, having an itchy, runny or blocked nose; having itchy red or watery eyes, wheezing, having shortness of breath, rashes and worsening asthma or worsening eczema. This can be a very scary thing to experience and this is only the tip of the iceberg. If someone has a serious allergy to something, then their symptoms are a lot more severe and you can go into anaphylactic shock. Most of these people have an EpiPen which helps to stop the reaction as soon as possible. EpiPen's contain a drug called Epinephrine which is a life-saving drug also known as adrenaline that reverses symptoms of severe allergic reactions or reverses the anaphylactic inside your body. The allergy triggers the immune system, then the immune system floods the body with inflammatory molecules called immune mediators. These immune mediators; although your body does this just to protect you causes your symptoms; whether it be hives or swollen eyes or nose. They also thicken your blood cells which means that your blood pressure decreases which can be very, very dangerous. It reduces the blood flow to your heart which is also very dangerous as it can cause called cardiac damage. With a short shot of an EpiPen; it alleviates all of these symptoms; stops cells from producing these mediators so eventually the hives will calm down and go away; it relaxes the muscles in the airways so that you find it easier to breathe and it tightens your blood vessels so that there is more blood flow to the heart. If someone has a severe allergic reaction then you need to get their EpiPen and push it into their outer thigh, this will then push a dose of epinephrine into their body that will then travel to the bloodstream and will alleviate the symptoms.
If you think you suffer from an allergy or have these symptoms, then you should go to a doctor. There are lots of ways that doctors can diagnose allergies. One of the most common ones is a skin test - this is when they use a plastic device to prick or take a small amount of the substance you think you are allergic to and place it just on top of your skin. It isn't painful and it doesn't break the skin. After 15 to 20 minutes the doctors look to see if there's any development. This includes redness on the skin or hives. This shows that you suffer from this allergy. To make this test as accurate as possible doctors even perform control tests to make sure that the test is correct. These are called positive and negative controls. They place something that every person should be allergic to on the skin to see what kind of development they should expect if the person is allergic to the substance in question. Then they place the negative control which is something that no one should be allergic to, to see a happens. However, this method doesn't always work but fear not; more tests are available. You can have an intradermal skin test. This is when they put a syringe with a small amount of the substance just under your skin and wait for fifteen minutes to see if symptoms occur.
Another form is the IgE test. This is when they take a small sample of your blood to examine in a lab. If they find antibodies against the specific substance you think you're allergic to in your bloodstream, then it is clear that your body thinks it is dangerous and so you have an allergy to this substance. For allergies that take a long time to show like a nickel allergy, they can use a patch test. This is when they place small patches on your back with various compounds containing the substance. They leave it there for two to three days to see if any symptoms occur.
You can be allergic to almost anything, but the most common allergies are:
Pollen, dust, food allergy (most common peanuts); insect stings, animal hair and some medication.
Most of these allergies will just be mild so the best thing for you to do is avoid eating or being near/ in contact with that substance. If you do come into contact with it, you can take antihistamines to help with the symptoms if it is necessary.
Overall, allergies are very complicated things but they affect many of us globally. They can cause serious damage and each one of us must know how to help those who suffer around us.
'I'm thankful for my struggle because without it I wouldn't have stumbled across my strength' Alex Elle
