Common Kids Allergies

30 November -0001

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Firstly - What is an allergy?

An allergy is a sensitivity to a substance that does not usualy cause people any discomfort or harm. Hay fever, which is caused by a sensitivity to pollen, is a well known example. Asthma, eczema, rashes and a variety of other complaints can be caused partly or entirely by an allergy. In fact, allergies can affect almost any part of the body and be caused by a vast range of natural and artificial substances.

Allergies are a reaction to allergens, a name given to those substance such as pollen that spark off symptoms of an allergy in someone who is sensitive to it.

An allergy is everything from a runny nose, itchy eyes and palate to skin rash.

It aggravates the sense of smell, sight, tastes and touch causing irritation, extreme disability and sometimes fatality.

It occurs when the body's immune system overreacts to normally harmless substances.

Allergy is widespread and affects approximately one in four of the population in the UK at some time in their lives. Each year the numbers are increasing by 5% with as many as half of all sufferers being children.

Symptoms

Symptoms of an allergy tend to show up in/on the parts of the body that are exposed to the allergen. An airborne allergen like pollen, makes it severest impact in the eyes, nose and air passages.

Skin allergies

There are three basic forms of allergic reaction affecting the skin. The most common especially among children is eczema. Dermatitis is a particular type of eczema affecting adults. This is caused by direct skin contact with certain allergens.

Eye and ear allergies

Allergic reactions can also affect the eyes. Theses generally show up as irritation and redness in the white of the eye. Severe swellings can occur but, but more often then not the symptoms are watering and soreness. The ears are also often affected by allergens, when this happens the fluid will build up inside the ear and may temporarily affected your hearing.

Nasal allergies

Hay fever can affect the eyes and ears though the its principal target is the nose, which becomes stuffy, runny or sneezy. Some people suffer from symptoms which are similar to those of hay fever, and will suffer with them all year round. They may have a stuffy, runny nose virtually all the time, although it will often be worse indoors, particularly at night and early morning. This condition is called Perennial rhinitis and can be the result of an to the common house dust mite.

Food allergies and food intolerance

These have a wide variety of symptoms. The most obvious symptoms of an acute food allergy are a stomach upset followed quickly by nausea, vomiting or diarrhoea. People who are acutely sensitive to a food may also get a swollen tongue and lips.

Sometimes the suffer gets 2 kinds of symptoms; for instance a child who is allergic to cow`s milk may get diarrhoea and a skin rash. Apart from skin rashes, which may appear hours or even days later after eating the food these symptoms become apparent almost imediatley after eating, usually within an hour. This makes it quite easy for the sufferer to identify the allergen.

Recurrent tummy pains and hyperactivity in children have been attributed to food allergies.

The most severe - though fortunately, quite rare - symptom caused by allergy is anaphylaxis. In this instance, the patient`s air passages swell and close and the blood pressure falls abruptly. This is an acute and life threatening condition, though it can be reversed very quickly by an injection of adrenalin.

Causes

The basic difference between people who suffer from allergies and those who do not is still not known. Allergies do tend to run in familiesn - and it is very common for people to develop hay fever, childhood eczema and asthma (a combined condition known as atopy).

This may be due to an inherited characteristic in the cells which make up the immune system, which is the body`s defence system against desease. Most allergies are are the result of an error in the imune system. The body`s defence forces react to the allergen as if it were a dangerous infected organism. White blood cells called lymphocytes are one of the most important elements of the immune system.

Theses cells are constantly on the look-out for foreign substances such as bacteria, viruses and proteins which are different from the body`s own proteins and which may present a threat. When these white blood cells come across a potentially dangerous foreign protein they form a substance called an antibody, which combines with the foreign protein and neutralizes it. By some highly complicated process, which is not yet understood by scientists, the immune system of a normal healthy person knows how to tell the difference between a dangerous foreign protein (like a virus) and a harmless one, such as food protein.

But in an allergic person the imune system reacts to a harmless foreign protein as if it were a dangerous one, and starts forming an antibody. This antibody attaches itself to cells called mast cells. Mast cells contain a number of chemicals the most important of which is histamine. When the body is exposed to the protein again, the antibody attached to the mast cells comines with the foreign proteins and tries to neutralise them. But in so doing, it upsets the structure of the mast cell, which falls apart and releases its load of histamine.

The surge of histamine produces an effect very much like the inflammation which follows a wound; it makes tiny blood vessels dilate and they dilate their walls become leaky, so that fluid from the blood escapes into the surrounding tissues. The dialation of the tiny blood vessels causes redness and itching, and the escaping fluid makes the surrounding tissues swell.

More Kids Allergies on page 2