What Causes Allergies
What causes allergies, you ask? Well, there's no one thing that's the culprit or at least that's the way it looks.Gluten allergies and spring allergies couldn't possibly be caused by the same thing, could they? And people who have a milk allergy don't necessarily exhibits the same kinds of symptoms as those who have a shellfish allergy. The symptoms of allergies appear to be different for different people. But I wonder if there could be one underlying condition causing all these different allergy symptoms? One of the whole body systems in our human body and the bodies of various of our animal friends is the immune system. The American Heritage dictionary defines the immune system as the integrated body system of organs, tissues, cells, and cell products such as antibodies that differentiates self from non-self and neutralizes potentially pathogenic organisms or substances. When the immune system becomes hypersensitive and highly reactive, that's what causes allergies. When the immune system misidentifies substances in the world around us as serious enemies and then reacts out of proportion to the perceived threat, our body displays symptoms which are called allergies. Some of these symptoms are only mildly annoying but some of them have the makings of a major illness. When our immune system overreacts like this there be a might have a genetic tendency for it. In other words maybe one or both of parents had a similar weakness also. At least that's the common medical wisdom. I wonder if there might be another explanation for what causes allergies. The world we live in is filled with an unimaginable number of substances our bodies are not naturally equipped to handle. And not only that. Those substances interact with one another creating yet other challenges for us. 
Take a corn allergy, for example. Corn is a great food. Many cultures use it as their staple grain and have done so for thousands of years. Corn developed along certain lines building itself up internally with fats and proteins and enzymes and carbohydrates all in a natural balance with each other. Then we humans came along and messed with the natural recipe causing corn to develop differently than nature had intended. We bred for certain characteristics which changed the entire internal balance of corn. But we didn't change our own internal balance. So we eat corn and our body expects it to be the same old corn that we ate for thousands of years and our body tries to process it the same way. But guess what? It's not the same old corn anymore. And so now our body doesn't know what to do with the substance it historically came to know as corn which had a certain internal balance of components that it used to know what to do with. Could something like this be at least partially responsible for what causes allergies? And guess what else? Scientists and manufacturers have learned how to break corn apart and use only certain of its components instead of the whole food. One of the best examples is the creation and use of high fructose corn syrup known as HFCS. It sounds pretty innocuous doesn't it? HFCS. What could be wrong with that? Well, what's wrong with it is that, once again, our bodies don't know what to do with it. It's in so many things we buy off our grocery store shelves. It's used to sweeten things that don't really need sweetening. But now the manufacturer can say that there's no sugar in the product. What's there instead is HFCS. But they don't have to tell you how detrimental HFCS is to your well-being. They don't have to tell you that your body doesn't have a clue what to do with HFCS. Could something like this be at least partially responsible for what causes allergies? So what's the point of all this talk? The point of it is that your body has been invaded by a foreign substance - HFCS - that it doesn't know what to do with. And so it freaks on some level. It starts to fight this foreign invader substance which is distressing its immune system. Now imagine that happening over and over again with all the various unnatural substances we put in our bodies or are exposed to in other ways every day. Can you see how stressed and distressed our immune system might become? Could something like this be at least partially responsible for what causes allergies? Let's think of this another way for just a moment. Imagine that you have a neighbor who, each time you see him, raises his fist at you and yells at you in a threatening manner for absolutely no reason that you can see. I'll bet that after this happens to you four or five times, you will begin to cringe whenever you see that neighbor. You might even begin to feel fear and want to hide from him till he's gone. That's a pretty understandable reaction. Your natural tendency is to want to protect yourself from an external threat. You don't know what to do with his aggression. You just want to be away from it. Well, the HFCS and lots of other unnatural substances in the environment are like that nasty neighbor. They make your immune system cringe and want to get away from them. So, could something like this be at least partially responsible for what causes allergies? Surely not all allergies are like this though? No, they're not. There are some allergies we are born with. Those are the genetically caused allergies such as perhaps wheat allergies or an egg allergy or milk allergies. But, although I'm not a doctor and your doctor is your final word on these things - I have to say this even though I don't believe it - I wonder if even allergies which have a genetic origin can be made much worse by the additional stress we put on our immune system with all the unnatural substances we put in our body or are exposed to externally. Think about it.
And have another look at this.
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