ALLERGIES
SOME COMMENTS ON ALLERGIES
Allergies can be defined as an abnormal reaction to normally harmless substances. Things such as pollens, dust, animal dander, foods or contact with certain chemicals causes a chain reaction in your immune system. These substances are called allergens and may produce symptoms in a person sensitive to them.
The most common symptoms produced by allergies are hay fever ( sneezing, runny nose, itching and congestion), asthma (shortness of breath, wheezing, cough) or eczema. An allergic person may develop only one of the above symptoms, such as hay fever, or he may have one symptom at one period of life and a different one later. A frequent sequence is for an infant to have eczema, which clears up early in childhood, and then develop nasal symptoms and/or asthma later in life.
The tendency to become sensitized or allergic is usually inherited. What one becomes sensitive to depends, in part, to what one is exposed to. Sensitivities may change in severity or may be gradually lost. Strictly speaking, allergies are not “cured” but only kept under control so that it doesn’t produce symptoms.
There are three fundamental ways of treating allergies:
1. Removal of allergens.
2. Control of symptoms with medication.
3. An attempt to build up the patient’s resistance to the things he or she is sensitive to by the injection of increasing amounts of allergens at regular intervals.
