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Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 8, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Potentially a stupid question based on misunderstanding, but it's really confusing to me now.

So, as far as I know, allergies are caused by immune system reacting to some substance, usually harmless to most people. One of the ways to treat allergies is to introduce small quantities of the allergen and try to get the immune system to stop treating it as a threat.

Then, the main function of the immune system is fighting infections - e.g. viruses or bacteria or whatever. Unfortunately, sometimes viruses and bacteria do their business so quickly that they overwhelm the system and it can not fight them off. To prevent that, we have vaccinations - where we introduce the small quantities of the antigen to the system and try to get the immune system to recognize it and fight them better when they come next time.

What is confusing to me is why in these two instances the same system is behaving in two opposite ways? In the first instance, if you introduce something it then makes the immune system to ignore it eventually, but in the second instance, if you introduce something, the immune system starts to react stronger to it? What am I missing?

Also, does this mean that if somebody didn't have a certain allergy, and I were their evil nemesis and wanted to give them one, I could do it by concocting a specific "vaccine" that would stimulate their immune system to react on the specific substance - just as regular vaccines do? Or somehow it works with one class of substances and not with the others, and if so - why?

I understand the full answer might be "get PhD in immunology and it'll all be clear to you" but maybe there's a shorter answer to this?

Huh. That’s a really interesting question.

I don’t think the state of allergy therapy is particularly good, judging purely by the people I know who have undergone it, but there should still be a body of theory...somewhere.

There’s got to be two different parts of the system at play. Food allergies are best known for causing anaphylaxis, not fevers and fatigue. And I have no idea how vomiting gets triggered in some allergies and diseases but not others. So my wildly uneducated guess would be separate pathways for inflammation and for fever? Then vaccines could boost the system for one while allergen therapy could subvert the other.

But that doesn’t explain anything! If low-grade exposure can erode performance, then how come “reinfection” is usually via a related strain, not from a lost reponse? Do people ever develop allergies after tragic accidents in the peanut factory? How do our bodies stay functional at all??

Speaking of allergy therapy, mine has been going on for years with no discernible effect. But according to the pharmacist, they're expensive as hell. If that is actually true, then I smell a bit of a scam there.