The Top Seasonal Allergy Myth

Yes, there is only one really big one. Whittled down to its core, the practice of medicine only requires two steps:  diagnosis and treatment.

If a diagnosis doesn’t provide all the information necessary to deliver an effective treatment, then it fails as a diagnosis.   This is the plight of “allergy” as a diagnosis, it tells you what you have not why you have it.  Without the why part of the equation, all you can do is put out allergy induced histamine fires as they happen with no influence over the future behavior of your immune system.

So that’s the myth, that “allergy” is a valid diagnosis.  Which begs the question:  how do we formulate an answer to the why part of the equation?

What Causes Allergies?

Before I explore that question it helps to point out that western medical science has intricately defined the what part of the equation:

Here’s a short description of what occurs:  Mast cells containing mostly histamine are located throughout your body.  These mast cells are covered with small antibodies, each of which is designed to identify one substance the immune system has decided to defend against, for example pollen, dust, or any other substance or organism.  When that substance shows up, it has the right key to activate its corresponding antibody on the surface of the mast cell, so the antibody opens the mast cell releasing its pro-inflammatory, vasodilating, nerve irritating substances into the surrounding tissue.

Mast cells are in the highest concentration in 3 tissues: respiratory, digestive, and skin. Those tissues are where most allergy symptoms occur.

To summarize: mast cells → antibodies → allergens → trigger → histamine → respiratory, digestive, and skin reactions.

Why Do You Have Allergies?

The mystery of why overprotective defenses develop in the first place has not been convincingly answered by medical science.  The search has lead researchers to look in many directions, including epidemiological patterns, geography, physiology, biochemistry, genetics, epigenetics, toxicology, and under other rocks for clues.

Three perspectives have emerged as plausible explanations for the increasing incidence of hypersensitivity disorders.  We can cover them pretty quickly:

1. Toxic Exposure Syndrome

Everybody should already know this one.  Every day most people consume agrochemicals, heavy metals, plastic residues, and breathe a litany of chemicals both indoors and outdoors.  Many people have had toxic amalgam fillings in their teeth that have broken off or leached and dissolved into their system over many years.  Multiple pharmaceuticals are consumed daily by a shocking percentage of the population.  Electromagnetic pollution increasingly permeates our home and office environment.  And the list goes on.  Have these regular and life-long exposures confused our immune systems and made us increasingly hypersensitive?

2. The Hygiene Hypothesis (We’re Too Hygienic?)

There are well documented increases in the incidence of allergies and autoimmunity among the more developed/sanitary populations around the globe.  Developed populations tend to have both better hygiene and more pollution.

Why is hygiene a problem?  The Hygiene Hypothesis points out that our immune systems evolved in a relatively challenging environment with greater exposure to parasites, bacteria, and viruses.  Modern living conditions, especially in developed societies, have significantly reduced these exposures causing the immune system to be over-engineered for modern conditions.  This is one way to explain why immune cells have become more likely to defend against non-threatening elements of our environment such as flowers and grasses, as occurs in allergic individuals.

Autoimmunity, wherein the immune system attacks the body’s own tissues, has also been linked to modern hygienic conditions.

3. Old Friends Hypothesis

An offshoot of the Hygiene Hypothesis called the “Old Friends” Hypothesis points out that in addition to the overly hygienic living conditions, modern societies lack the same historic exposure to copacetic (friendly) bacteria and other organisms that have helped us regulate digestion and immunity since the dawn of agriculture.  Agriculture brought greater numbers of livestock and larger communities of people into closer and more intimate living conditions.  The exposure to communal organisms, which are now missing from our environment, were shared and integrated into our human systems over thousands of years.  Again, this describes a problem related to hygiene.  The over-use of antibiotics and exposure to toxins has compounded the problematic changes in the microbiome, our internal community of healthy organisms.

These factors are all part of a bigger puzzle that is gradually being filled in and which offers a broader view on why hypersensitivity disorders occur and are increasingly common.  However the above three perspectives all describe external influences.  In order to provide more effective therapeutic solutions we need to answer the why question from insights about internal mind/body function.

Internal Influences and the Allergy Myth

Everyone in our modern world has been influenced by both unnaturally hygienic conditions and ubiquitous environmental toxins.  Yet only a certain percentage of us develop hypersensitivity disorders like allergy.  Some would say that the reason lies within each individual and their unique internal physiology, metabolism, and state of mind.  And they wouldn’t be wrong.

But there is important commonality to these individual patterns of hypersensitivity.  And the commonalities are a critical link to finding answers.  These common denominators point most clearly to the necessity of maintaining healthy internal organ function in order to keep the immune system functioning as intended, rather than targeting the immune system directly.  Attempting to correct abnormal immune activity by directly targeting the immune system can be as unproductive as watering a tree branch because it has dry leaves.  Taking anti-histamines and steroidal anti-inflammatories for allergy provides temporary relief, but does not address the underlying causes.

There are several healthcare practices that focus on internal organ and metabolic function in their diagnostic and treatment approaches to allergy.  These include Traditional Chinese Medicine, Functional Medicine, Naturopathy, Ayurvedic Medicine, and Classical Homeopathy.  Cause and effect relationships between the function of immune cells and the health of organs and glands are often difficult relationships to trace.  Yet this, I believe, is a critical link to establish in understanding why some people develop allergies.

Once the internal health factors affecting immune function have been uncovered, it is then possible to ask why again, why have these internal organs developed dysfunctional activity?  The diagnostic exploration of this mystery is likely to involve genetics, epigenetics, consumption, and behavioral considerations.  Maybe even spiritual poisons and psychology.  Always more to explore.