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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?
I do not have PhD nor any degree whatsoever in immunology. But what about this: I think none of allergens (say, hay pollen) multiply in the host organism nor cause any other problems than the immunological overreaction. Infectious agents (viruses, bacteria, and other) do generally grow and multiply and eventually will cause problems to the host if the immune system stands still twiddling their thumbs. (And then you have toxins, which are not biological replicators, but disrupt biological function of the host.)
If you introduce allergens to host body in very small quantities, the immune system may do nothing, and then adapt to the "observation" that left alone, those allergens do nothing and ultimately disappear. Whereas a pathogen, unless dealt with, will keep multiplying and causing increasing amounts of problems to the host organism's main functions. If you introduce a very small dose of pathogen to the host organism, so small that the immune system (again) may do nothing, you will have more of the pathogen (a larger "attack surface" for the immune system).
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