WHY DO SO MANY SUFFER FROM HAY FEVER
YOUR eyes are itching and watering, you
sneeze all day, your nose keeps dripping, and you have difficulty breathing.
What is happening? You might have a cold. But if these symptoms afflict you
when you are around pollen, you may well be suffering from hay fever. If so,
you have plenty of company. The number of people whose condition is diagnosed
as hay fever keeps rising every year.
HAY fever is nothing more than an
exaggerated reaction of our body toward a substance it considers harmful, reports
the magazine Mujer de Hoy. The immune system of people with allergies rejects
all agents it considers foreign –including pollen –even though these are not
really dangerous. And when the immune system overreacts in this way, it causes
the annoying symptoms described at the outset.
In 1819, English physician John
Bostock described hay fever. He was the first to do so. Bostock detailed his
own irritating seasonal symptoms. He believed that the symptoms were caused by
freshly cut hay, so the condition was called hay fever. Later it was discovered
that the agents that provoke the allergic reaction are actually many different
kinds of pollen. At the beginning of the 19th century, Bostock found
very few cases throughout all of England.
Why, though, are there so many hay-fever sufferers today? Dr.Javier
Subiza, director of the center for Asthma and Allergies in Madrid, spain,
mentions two theories researchers are investigating. One theory puts the blame
on diesel engines. It is thought that the particles coming from the combustion
of diesel fuel can stimulate the action of allergens, agents that trigger an
allergic reaction. According to allergist Dr. Juan Kothny Pommer, in
industrialized countries hay fever affects as much as 20 percent of the population,
being more frequent in the cities.
A second theory suggests that the cause
is simply too much hygiene. We are born in an operating room, we consume
sterile food, we get inoculated against many diseases, and we immediately take
antibiotics if we get ill. Thus, from childhood our immune system is
conditioned to developed allergies.
If you are a victim of this immunological
overreaction, do not despair! With the right diagnosis and treatment, it is
possible to control and reduce both the frequency and intensity of hay’s
irritating symptoms.
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