No one likes to learn they are allergic to something. Reactions to allergies can range from mild irritation and watering eyes to dangerous closing of the throat and immense swelling. Allergies can be incredibly dangerous and life threatening in many cases. Allergies are also incredibly common. It’s not surprising to learn that many of the people you know suffer from allergies.
Despite their common nature, many people don’t actually know what allergies are. They just accept them as a part of life. It’s good to know more about allergies. Understanding how they work and what people are allergic to can help to avoid dangerous situations where people can be hurt.
What Actually Is An Allergy?
When the body detects a foreign substance, it will try to figure out it is dangerous to the body. In many cases, the body may misdiagnose something as dangerous and respond. These are allergies. Normally the body would recognize that pollen isn’t dangerous. But people with a pollen allergy have their body think it’s dangerous and attack it in a certain way.
Skin allergies develop when a substance that the body deems allergic touches the skin. This tends to lead to troublesome rashes, redness and swelling. If the allergy is severe enough, it can affect other areas of the body quickly as well.
Common Allergies
There’s a wide variety of different things that people are allergic to. What’s interesting is how they have grouped together into different groups and are common among many people. Some of the most likely allergies out there are:
- Hay Fever - This is actually a combination of pollen from grass, trees and plants. This is very common from spring to fall and can get especially bad during certain aspects of the plant’s life cycle.
- Animal Dander - Some people may be allergic to multiple animals, while others are only allergic to a cat, dog, etc. It’s important to note that they are actually allergic to the dander released from their hair and skin.
- Medicine - Medicinal allergies can be scary, as they often aren’t discovered until the medicine is needed for something else. There are several antibiotics
- Latex - Latex is used to make gloves, condoms and many other things. People with latex allergies tend to get bad skin rashes.
- Nuts - Many people have dangerous nut allergies that can be life threatening. In some cases, just smelling them is enough to cause a person to require immediate medical attention.
- Shellfish - Much like nuts, shellfish allergies can be both common and risky.
- Other Food - Really, there’s a wide number of different allergies that come from food. Strawberry allergies are common, as is allergies to eggs, milk, other fruit and many other items.
What Can You Do?
For most people, allergy relief comes down to some over the counter medications. These are taken as both a counter to an allergy or as a preemptive measure to avoid suffering in the first place. This is especially common with dust and pollen allergies.
Dangerous allergic reactions often need medical attention. However, if it was just left to emergency response, it would be too late. People with dangerous medical conditions will often carry with them one use injections. These injections can counter the worst of an allergic reaction.
