Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that"Earth laughs in flowers" Well, you know what?
I don't think it's funny. If you're like me, the coming of spring signals one thing: allergies.
I mean seriously, how much crud can my head really hold? It's like Hermione's purse up in there.
Of course it's not really fair to blame flowers for most seasonal allergies. While most plants do keep their pollen-covered private parts right out there in the open, flower pollen is usually too heavy to go airborne, instead they get bees and other pollinators to help them do the fertilization deed.
It's mainly trees and grasses that let their genetic material loose on the wind, and they don't mess around. I mean really? !
Is that necessary? If one tree needs that much pollen to reproduce, maybe evolution is trying to tell you something.
That's all I'm saying. Maybe this was a mistake… By my immune system!
Allergic reactions are the result of our immune system going haywire, and doing battle with completely and totally harmless stuff like pollen, dust, or pet dander, because it clearly has nothing better to do. Your body enlists several types of antibodies in its immune army.
Most are sent out to fight different invaders like viruses and bacteria, but this one, IgE, seems to have just one purpose: making us miserable a few times a year… I mean mediating our body's response o allergens. When we are first exposed to an allergen, we don't have much of a reaction… on the outside.
But inside our bodies, it's different. A special cell in our immune system vacuums up foreign antigens and presents them to other cells, like"Hey, check this out, this doesn't belong here".
