Is it really an allergy?
Alice loved mushrooms. So when she happened to visit Italy, she longed to try truffle. Not the chocolaty treat, but the prized (and expensive) mushroom that is not just a delicacy in European cuisine, but also packed with nutrients. One evening during dinner she ordered a dish made of truffles. And she absolutely loved the experience.
The next morning, however, she woke up with swollen lips. She couldn’t help but laugh at her appearance; it reminded her of the actresses whose botox treatments had gone horribly wrong. But she was alarmed. What was it? An allergic reaction? To what? She had truffles for dinner the night before. But she had never had any mushroom allergy before.
Like all good millennials, she looked up Google University but found that truffles were not part of the “standard allergen list.” She however did find mention of such experiences on Reddit, but no concrete information to explain her condition. She felt “informationally stranded”; not knowing what to make of her situation.
Alice’s story is not unusual. It has happened to many people. Does her story resonate with one of your experiences? Have you had an episode that you were unable to explain or justify with the help of previous knowledge? In short, did you ever wonder, was it an allergy?
Allergy? Really??
The term “allergy” is one of the most misunderstood medical terms and is often thrown around mindlessly with regards to food, certain smells, even cold. This is a huge disservice to people who really do suffer from allergies because of the popular perspective, often confused, around allergies. It is also potentially dangerous because it does not convey the severity of certain allergic conditions which some people suffer from.
In this state of confusion, it becomes difficult to really wrap your heads around a condition you, or your child, may be experiencing and you may end up asking yourself “is it really an allergy?”
Breaking down allergies
An allergy is your immune system’s hypersensitive reaction to a seemingly innocuous foreign substance. Under normal circumstances, your immune system has been trained, by millennia of evolutionary forces, to distinguish between self and non-self and mount an appropriate response against foreign, non-self, potentially harmful substances. These include among other things, disease causing microorganisms.
However, in some cases, the immune system is tricked (?) into believing that a particular foreign substance is extremely dangerous and it ought to be destroyed, whereas in reality, it is as harmless as a pet dog on a sunny day. The immune system in turn, becomes hyperactive while trying to mount a response against the innocuous substance and this exaggerated response often does more harm than good.
This “hypersensitivity” of the immune system towards certain substances is the basis of allergies. An allergic person’s immune system may be hypersensitive towards pollen, some drugs, certain foods and some chemicals. In all of these cases, the immune system believes that these substances pose a grave danger to the body and must be destroyed. And so it mounts a response that produces a cascade of events leading to an “allergic reaction.”
What these reactions are, and why does the immune system act thus are matters of another time, to be discussed and understood in detail. But first, let us try to understand whether we know enough about allergies to be able to diagnose our conditions.
Do we know enough?
Let us take the example of Alice to make this point. Many times, foods not documented are observed to show symptoms that are also not documented. In some cases, there have been reports of mild reactions like itchy mouths and swollen lips after consuming foods like kiwi, hazelnuts, carrots, bananas and watermelon. Neither are these documented to cause allergies and nor are the symptoms documented as part of the battery of symptoms associated with an allergic response. In the same vein, some people have reported reactions to ingredients that have never been on any widely recognized allergen lists, including meat or mustard seed. Some people seem to have a problem with mushrooms, though not all, like in the case of Alice. She never had any problems with Shiitake, or Portobellos, only with truffles.
This creates a confusing situation, not only for the individual but also for the medical practitioner, because neither is sure whether this is an allergy or any other reaction. This also creates an embarrassing situation where such individuals are unable to tell anyone that they suffer from an “allergy” because they don’t really know.
Why?
Allergies fall under the overarching umbrella of the workings of the immune system, which at times seem mysterious. Even with all the advancements in our knowledge of the human body, there are still things we don’t fully understand with regards to our immune system.
Our immune system rivals our nervous system in complexity. But because we cannot define, or confine the immune system to a particular region in the body, we are blissfully unaware of the fearfully powerful system working inside our body trying to keep us safe from the thousands of potential attacks that happen every day.
I usually liken our immune system to the military and the police force of a nation. Both are tasked to protect the nation — the military from external threats and the police force from internal trouble-makers. Similarly, there are two arms of the immune system — one to protect from external threats (invading microorganisms) and the other from internal threats (cancerous cells.) Knowing that there is a powerful and fully functional military and police force gives the citizenry of the nation assurance and a sense of security.
Now imagine a situation in which both the military and the police force train their guns against the very people and institutions they are meant to protect. In such a scenario, who will you look up to for help? Who is going to protect you if your protectors decide to screw you?
This situation, though extremely frightful and rare, if I might add, does occur. These are called “autoimmune disorders.” While some of them are not serious, some may progress to cause life-threatening situations. Your immune system is killing you from within and you cannot do much about it.
Allergies may be thought of as autoimmune disorders. In case of allergies too, your own immune system causes damage to your body by mounting an exaggerated response against innocuous substances.
It’s time to update our knowledge
While we know all this, new data suggests that what we know is inadequate. Due to reasons which we shall discuss in subsequent articles, autoimmune disorders are on the rise. Also what is frightening is the fact that new cases of allergies are coming up which do not follow documented evidence or knowledge. And so we have to edit and add to the existing knowledgebase. We need to open our perspective towards allergies and appreciate that our current understanding is limited and needs an overhaul.
We shall navigate the confusing world of allergies with the knowledge that we already have and with upcoming evidence. And we shall reach a place of clarity and certainty. We shall endeavor to then make perfect sense of our condition and then look at how we can be liberated from this state of misery. Stay with me.
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