May 14, 2017 • 26 mins
In this week's SYSK Select episode, about 30-40 percent of humans suffer from some sort of allergy. The big joke, though, is that every sufferer is the victim of mistaken identity. Allergies are the result of a hypersensitive immune system mistaking a harmless protein for a foreign invader.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, This is Chuck and welcome to this week's
s Y s K Select episode all about allergies. And
the reason I picked this one is because, although I
think I'm on record in this episode even as saying
allergies don't tend to affect me, they beat me this
year and I've had a rough time with the pollen,
so uh kind of got me thinking about allergies again,
(00:21):
and I thought maybe you all could learn a little
something to enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you should know from
house stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charlestovi, Chuck Bryant looking particularly
(00:42):
smart to day's glasses. Check someone with the beard, by
the way, that's right. Kind of bibles of mine after
making video content, having an entire season of a television
show that people still say, wait, I thought it was
the other one. Yeah, it's not like this is you know,
the radio days of nineteen forties when you really didn't
know what people look like like worst and Orsten Wells
is a baby face I used to bearded up back
(01:05):
in the day. Yeah, I think of him as like
the in Citizen Kane early on and he was clean
shaving baby face, right, yes, so what are you saying?
How's this like, Citizen Kane? It's not okay, good one,
thanks man, Um, how you doing. I'm good, A little
(01:27):
under the weather, but not because of allergies. You're sure.
Well it's funny you said that because Emily was like,
you know, you may have some allergies, but sometimes you
think you're getting sick and it could just be allergies.
It definitely could be. Yeah, well she's super allergic to
all sorts of stuff. Yeah, just really bad allergies, not
like food allergies, season yes, seasonal pollen, dust fight, brag
(01:50):
weed and all that stuff. Yeah. Venom. Yeah, and I
grew up. Yeah, I grew up with allergies. I think
I've mentioned this before, um, like asthma and all kinds
of stuff, And I just grew out of it because
that faith healer. Yeah, I guess so, right, I got
bit by that rattlesnake and everything was all good. Yeah.
Venom it works both ways, right, Actually it does because
(02:11):
there's anti venom. Remember didn't we do one on what's
the most venomous or poisonous all in the world? That
was a good one. It was the country of Australia.
It was it's a dangerous place. Well, Chuck, I specifically
remember one time when we were at work and you
were attacked by a bee and I had to deliver
(02:32):
an een shot to your thigh. Remember the whole gang
was there, the whole gang. They carted you off in
an ambulance. It was really kind of traumatic for us.
But I got my magnum p I played that day,
so it kind of everything balanced out. Every all's well,
that ends well. But what's mind boggling is that you
don't even have an allergy two bees. So like what
(02:55):
happened there, Well, that was just TV. It was a
TV show. Yeah, let me troubled distinguishing reality from fiction
these days, other people are too. Had you um had
to be allergy? Though, after reading this article you would
know what was going on. Yeah, And I think we
even covered that in the B podcast, didn't We We
covered like anaphylactic shock a little bit. But this is
(03:16):
like what we're about to talking about is allergies. The
cellular basis of what constitutes an allergy, how they're created,
where they come from. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I tried
to stump Emily this morning because I thought I was
being a smart guy. And even though she has bad allergies, also,
I could bet you don't even know what they really are.
Oh yeah, she's like, um, yeah, it's an overreaction from
your immune system to proceed invader, almost exactly like that,
(03:39):
And now I felt really stupid. It's like, oh to
perceived invader. She loved it. She's like called me smart
guy and like followed me around the house, brow beating me. Yeah. Um,
so she's absolutely right, though, I mean, an allergy is
basically a case of mistaken identity as far as your
immune system is concerned. You know, um, you've got all
(03:59):
sorts of foreign invaders coming at you all the time,
and we have an immune system to handle these things.
But every once in a while, and it depends, they
think probably that you are um, genetically unfulfilled if you
have allergies. Oh it's not a complete genetic code or something. Yeah,
Like you have a little bit of information missing. Your
immune system has a little bit of information missing. And
(04:22):
so for example that in the article they used the
example of um, like, uh, shrimp, You can eat shrimp
and there's maybe a protein attached to it that your
body is like did he eat this or where did
this come from? Or he being attacked by shrimp exactly,
And they think probably that all allergies are triggered by proteins.
(04:45):
But it's a case of mistaken identity. So let's talk
about this. Let's let's get into the immune system a
little bit. How how the immune system handles foreign invaders
perceived or otherwise. That's right. Uh, well, I guess we
could start with something called lymphocyte. And um, you've probably
heard of things like T cells and B cells. Those
(05:06):
are lymphocytes. Yeah, T cells are if that's how they
determine whether you have HIV. I believe like if your
T cell count is low because HIV is a it's
a an Immunoh. So they are both white blood cells
and they are really important to the immune system. Um,
but they make mistakes sometimes, right, And I love the
(05:27):
way this Who wrote this, by the way, Steve Beach, freelancer,
never heard of him. I thought he did a great
job though, because he likened the being T cells to
custom agents systoms agents just like they go anywhere they
want in your body and they investigate cells and basically
are like, let me see your papers where you going.
(05:49):
It's like, what's the purpose of your visit? It's like
arizona in your body. Yeah. Yeah, Like they show up
anywhere they can, Like you said, they can make it anywhere.
They can pass through membranes and blood vessels and just
pop up and they go, who are you lymph notes? Yeah,
very important for them to visit the lymph notes. It
is very important because that's where they go back and
start producing antibodies. Right, that's right. When they see something
(06:12):
and they discover a cell and they say, hold on
a minute, you'll pap us are not in order, then
there's trouble and they launched. Basically they start the attack
at that point. And we haven't quite figured this out. Um. Basically,
what happens when a B cell, especially encounters in a
(06:34):
foreign body, which is called an antigen because they generate antibodies,
they trigger the generation of antibodies in your body. In
your body, so that's where antigen comes from. Um. The
B cell basically takes down all of its data and
then goes back up into the lymph nodes, and that
that B cell, that white blood cell, turns into a
(06:54):
plasma cell and starts churning out antibodies that are specifically
tailored to counteract that antigen that for an invader that
it encountered. Right, and our body um our bodies have
five types of antibodies, and they're called immunoglobulens. I love
that word. It's tough to get out, but it's a
great word. Yeah. Uh, we'll call them I G s
(07:15):
and UM. I G E is the one that's responsible
for allergic reactions. Yeah. And the reason that that one
is responsible for allergic reactions as we understand them, is
because I G ease immunoglobulin ease. Yeah. Right. Um. They
attached to mast cells and uh baso fills and those
(07:35):
are two different types of UM cells. A mass cell
is found in a connective tissue and basi phil is
um a type of white blood cell. But they share
the commonality that both of them contain histamine. And when
they are hijacked by an I G e UM antibody, uh,
they basically become little ticking time bombs. So, so think
(07:58):
about this when you're when you come in contact with
an anogen and your body goes off, that white blood
cell goes off and starts producing antibodies. That first moment
of contact creates what's called the sensitizing exposure, right, Yeah,
and it's it's basically a mistake. It is in the
case of allergies, yeah, because I mean, like, there's nothing
inherently dangerous about ragweed pollen, and your body can handle
(08:22):
b venom and shellfish, right. But it's there's some protein
in each of those that certain people's bodies if they
don't have the genetic code for their white blood cells
to say, oh you pass, You're fine, then there's that
case of mistaken identity. Like you said, So, once you
have that sensitizing exposure, the first time your body comes
across this protein and there's that mistaken identity, it starts
(08:45):
producing antibodies, and those antibodies attached in the case of
I G S to um baza fills and mass cells,
and they start circulating throughout your body just waiting for
the next time it encounters that anigin that it's been
specifically designed to interact with. That's right, And what happens
then they say, hey, I know you, you're not supposed
(09:08):
to be here. I'm going to release something called histamine,
which is can be a great thing in your body
because that's what's gonna you know. That's basically your arsenal
fighting this this invader. But it can be a bad
thing too, um if too much of it is released,
as as we will see in a little while. Yeah.
So when in uh, when an and body and I
(09:29):
g E connects to an antigen um, it's already connected
to a mass seller basophil. Remember those things are loaded
with with histamine, so they're basically taking them along for
the party, right. Yeah, So when it connects it, it
sends a signal to something called um compliment proteins I believe,
and those compliment proteins come along and say, oh cool,
(09:51):
a chain reaction we can start to fulfill. And they
start locking on and locking on and locking on, and
once a certain amount of them have kind of locked
together along into this um antibody anergin mast cell, basophil
joint um, the mass cell or the basi phil goes
bluey and all of a sudden you have histamine floating
(10:14):
through your body. That's right. It basically destroys those original
cells such that the histamine is just released and unduly released.
And this is called the allergic cascade. This is what
we think of so you you may have come in
contact with shrimp and then ten days later you ate shrimp.
I I know I had an an allergic reaction shrimp. Um.
(10:37):
Oh yeah, okay, yeah, spoiler all right, UM. And it
takes maybe seven to ten days for that sensitizing exposure.
From that time to the next time, you could have
the allergic cascade, because that's how long it takes for
your body produced the antibodies. But when that that allergic
cascade is kicked off and the histamine is released, that's
when the symptoms that we associate with UM the type
(11:00):
of of allergy come about. So like if you inhale
it um, your mucous membranes are gonna flare up. You
might get hives. Hives which are basically like histamines caused
your blood vessels in the area to leak, which makes
it swell. That's a hive. Uh sneezing, wheezing all that.
I could wheeze right now if you want, if you
(11:21):
let me, but it would be really gross. Let's here,
I don't want to um because people would say, oh, man, chuck,
get to a sanitarium. But I'm sick. I don't have allergies. Sanitary. Yeah,
remember that. Yeah, like the Kellogg's thing. Yeah, sure, battle creek, Uh, nausea, diarrhea,
little vomiting. Maybe that's like you know, I think that's
the scale from least reaction to most. If you're vomiting,
(11:46):
then you've ingested something that you're really allergic to. Yeah.
You can become swollen usually like the part of your
body or the type of reaction you have, right like
where if you if your skin swells, if your arms swells,
you probably didn't inhale all learn just that it probably
came in contact with your skin, like a break in
your skin. Yeah. It depends on how you ingest it
(12:06):
and how your body reacts to it because it's different
for everyone, and severity obviously. But speaking of severity, it
can get really bad, which you talked about in the
B episode. Um, if this cascade, of this allergic cascade
UH is allowed to continue and you have enough of
a reaction to it, you have enough antibodies attached to
(12:27):
mass cells and bass it fills that a ton of
histamine is released, you can be in big trouble. You
can go into what's called anaphylactic shock. Yeah, and UH,
proceeding that you can have anaphylaxis, which is not quite
as bad. It's a it's a bad reaction, but it's
not the full blown shock. If you're in full blown
shock mode, then you could die easily and within minutes.
(12:50):
Even if you have let's say, like a peanut allergy
and you accidentally eat those peanuts. Unless you get that
injection of epinephrin that's gonna open those airways and restrict
the blood vessels back to their normal levels, then you
could be a goner, like really soon, right, And that's
called scary. That's called a systemic reaction where your whole
system is involved in this. And um, you're if you're
(13:11):
Since histamine dilates the blood vessels, your blood pressure can drop. Um.
It also causes swelling. Uh so like if your airways swollen,
that tends to close it off, which means it's tough
for you to breathe. Yeah, you could starve your brain
and kidneys of oxygen. Um and you know, oregon failure
can happen. And I think what they say, several hundred
(13:32):
people die in the United States alone each year. Yeah,
because we didn't cover this in the UM in the
TV episode about bees where I delivered that from Penn
and saved your life, if you'll remember. I do remember. Um.
But apparently the effects of the epic pen last ten
to twenty minutes. Yeah, I didn't realize it was that short. Yeah,
so we should have had you outfitted with like a
(13:53):
whole belt of those things. I thought you were just
good to go once you have the EpiPen shot. Apparently
not so. I think it's just like, hey, let's stave
off death until we can get you to a hospital.
I think so too. But you have to do it
early enough so that it can it can have the
effect of counteracting that's allergic reaction. Uh. And you you,
if it's longer than ten to twenty minutes to get
(14:14):
to the hospital, you should probably have more in one pen.
But even if you've survived, your brain and your kidneys
being starved of oxygen, you can suffer long term damage
from going into anaphylactic shock. Yeah. I would be a
freak if I had this possibility existing in my life.
I would have an EpiPen in my car and my
you know, in each room of my house. I would
(14:34):
not take any chances. And what about like a peanut
allergy too, It's gotta be so easy to come in
contact with that. Yeah. Well, and we've mentioned that time
on the plane when they said you can't even open
peanuts on this flight, and we had people right in
they were like, yeah, dude, that's a that could seriously happen, right,
And I understand that. What's crazy to me is like,
if you fly Delta, they'll give you a peanuts all
day long. Well not if someone says that they're allergic.
(14:57):
That's the point. Yeah, I guess. So this is a
delta for And they said, I'm sorry, everyone, no peanuts
today because what's the delt. I thought was towel E
is allergic peanuts. Yeah, Everybody's like, oh God, I want
my peanuts. I hate Yeah, I guess I'll just eat
Press pretzels and Biscott cookies. Dirt dirt. Okay, So all right,
(15:20):
let's say you have allergies, or let's say you think
you have allergies and you want to go in and
find out for sure. There are a couple of ways
that they can that they can test this out, honey, Yeah,
and and run into a beehive. Uh no, you would
do what's called the scratch test. And I've never had
(15:41):
one of these. Emily's had one, and she also does immunotherapy,
which we'll get to. But they apply a diluted extract
of you know, different kinds of allergens to like your
back or your arm, and then they scratch you with
a needle and they see what happens, and if it
becomes swollen and red, then they say, you know, I
think you're allergic to ragweed because we just put some
(16:03):
on your body and scratched it. They can also do
blood tests and search for specific antigens. Yeah, that's better
for kids, I think, yeah, because it can cause a
sensitizing event in a kid if you expose them to it.
Because everybody knows their genes are just stupid. Yeah, they're
like a very um susceptible to influence. I guess, which
(16:24):
is weird to me. So here's the thing. Does that
mean that it's impossible to die from your first beasting?
That at what is possible or impossible? Because if there
has to be a sensitizing event, how would you come
in contact with the venom other than to be stung?
How would you become sensitized? I was looking all over
the internet, sor and I think One of the things
(16:46):
that kind of found well doing additional research for this
episode is that we have a pretty good idea of
how allergies work, but it's definitely not complete yet. Yeah,
I mean when you're on the cellular level, I'm sure
there are still some mysteries to be had. But they say,
it's like, because one of your questions was, how do
they identify that for an invader? And I was happy
(17:07):
to just say they identify for an invader, right, and
how do they how do they take down its information
and then go back to the to the lymph node
and start producing an animboo. They had a pin and
pad and they had a little golf cart. They did
a police sketch. Yeah, that's the way I set um.
So you've got scratched therapy, blood tests, they both work,
they're okay. Um. And then if you if they say
(17:30):
you know what you are you're allergic to somethings Y
and Z. There's basically three things they recommend. The first
is to avoid that thing whatever it is, sure and
if that's shell fish or peanuts, then you're pretty good
shape because that's pretty easy to avoid in most cases.
You would think, have you ever had a shrimp allergy.
Shrimp is pretty delicious, No, but it's it's easier to
(17:52):
avoid than pollen, let's say, because pollen's everywhere, especially here
in the South. So if you're allergic to pollen, there's
no avoiding it. I mean there's cars that all the
car is in the spring in the South, or yellow.
Every car's painting the streets run yellow. Literally. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
so you would take medication accorded coasteroid. You might walk
around with an F and f rompen depending on what
(18:12):
you are allergic to. Um, you know that kind of thing.
And then the third one is what you said Emily
was doing and what I've done before too, which is
immunotherapy done this I think? So, I mean I undertook
the process of immunotherapy by myself and it seems to
have worked. I was about to say, did a doctor
give you injections at point in your life? Tell me
(18:34):
about Emily's experience. Well, she she does the standard immunotherapy
where she goes into to get her allergy shots once
a month, I think, And um, they start you out
on a on a low uh dose that's like a
basically a weak delusion of these antigens. And they they
injected in her body and just build that up over
(18:56):
time to increase her her immune response I guess right.
And then over time, so this is what they think
happens over time. Either the body possibly gets it's genetic
information filled in enough so that it's it's like, oh,
was my face red because this wasn't actually a foreign invader,
(19:16):
It's just a shrimp protein UM. And or they believe
that another UH and a body I g G, which
acts as kind of like a blocking antibody that prevents
an allergic reaction, UM starts to build up as a
as a result of immunotherapy. We should say, I think
(19:37):
immunotherapy is still fairly controversial, is it. I believe so,
because it's introducing, you know, a potentially dangerous thing into
a human being. And it's not like if you ask
somebody if honey as a good immunotherapy, Logically it should
make sense. If you use local honey, very very local honey,
it's going to contain some of the same pollen um
(19:59):
that you're supposed to that you're allergic to in it,
and so when you eat it, when you ingested, it's
like taking that low level and it should be doing
the same thing as that, you know, taking injections from
the doctor, but it's more delicious and it takes a
long time. At we's been at it for she was
at it for a couple of years without virtually no
uh success, right, so it takes Has it been helping
(20:22):
though at all? I think so, because she still has
bad allergies, but they used to be way worse. But
she's been on these shots now for like, I mean,
she did it when she was a kid and then
she's been on it again for like five years. Probably
it's been a while. So I've I've had one serious.
It wasn't even serious, but it was my distinct allergic reaction.
(20:42):
And it was shrimp once and I ate it and
you mean, just like why are you red? And like
what are those red dots all over you? What's going on?
And uh, I figured out I was. I was having
an allergic reaction to shrimp. So I've never had before, right,
and I love shrimp. And I tried it the next day,
tried a little by a shrimp kind of had a
similar reaction. So I was like, something's going on here.
(21:03):
So I decided that I was going to get myself
over my shrimp allergy. Right. Have you ever had shrimp chips? Uh? Yes,
They're delicious. They're delicious. They're like little kind of potato
chip French fries with their shrimp flavor because they have
shrimp dust on them, like sexual powdered shrimp shrimp dust.
(21:24):
So I started like very eating little amounts of shrimp chip,
and then over the over time I would eat more
whole bags of them at a time, you know. Um,
and then finally I get to the point where I
could eat shrimping it. I don't know if that really
cured me or if that was just a fluke, like
maybe that shrimp was just a local type of shrimp
and Carolinas or something like. But um, that's that's my
(21:46):
immunotherapy story. Well, you can eat shrimp now like Gangbusters,
So yeah, and I do, do you really? Yeah, whenever
I can. I like shrimp. I'm trying to make up
for lost time because I spent like three years, two
years without eating shrimp. So be where prawns and Trump
of the world, gosh, number eat you live? Will you know?
(22:07):
Okay that's gross. No, it's not people do that. Um,
I guess that's it. Yeah, that is allergies. And I
bet the reason I quizzed Emily is because I think
a lot of people who have allergies don't even understand
the core concepts. And uh yeah, hopefully now you do that.
It's a case of mistaken identity. It's so awesome. Yeah,
(22:27):
and your your DNA is dumb or incomplete. Okay, UM,
if you like this, you should go check out how
allergies work. You can type them in the search bar
how stuff works dot com. You can also look up
another article I wrote about using honey for immunotherapy. That's
pretty interesting. Um. Probably like honey allergies maybe would be
(22:49):
too good words of putting the search bar for that one. Um,
and I said the search bar twice, which means we're
gonna have to listener males. Huh just one o. Well, first,
before we do that, how about a word from our
sponsor time for listener mal Okay, I'm gonna call this
in the name of the fire guys. I just listened
(23:10):
to your cast on stunt men stunt women, let's just
say stunt people, and I was reminded of his story.
I thought you might like to hear my dad as
an actor and way back in the nineties, he was
in a film called In the Name of the Father,
Remember that, Oh yeah, with Daniel day Lewis. Right, great
movie is that his dad? Um? He said? It stars
Abraham Lincoln or Daniel day Lewis. In the film he
(23:34):
played and this is one of my favorite like movies
from that year. By the way, it's about the I
r A, wasn't it. Yeah? It was about like a
wrongfully imprisoned um group of friends basically that they suspected
as being like bombers. I don't want to give ways
too much, okay, but there is a prison in the film.
He played a prison guard who gets set on fire
(23:56):
by some pretty nasty inmates. So I guess there's a
fire too in the Guard. In the Guard, what happens
next served as a warning for any actor who decides
their up for performing their own stunts. The director decide
of my dad could do some flailing and running with
his arms on fire, and that a stunt professional would
do the more intense full body fire shots. We like
(24:17):
we said in the Stunt Person podcast, like the fire thing.
You're always running, you going, what what do you doing?
You're on fire? Do you stand there? Like? Can someone
put me out. Some people do Buddhist monks just sit there.
Well that, yeah, that's different. I'm ready on the one.
They wrapped up his arms, covered them in jelly, and
set them ablaze. But what my dad had failed to
(24:38):
realize is that the stuntmen do not wait for anyone
to say action. As a result, he just stood there
on fire, waiting for someone to say he could go,
while it's getting hotter and hotter with each passing second.
Fortunately the director eventually realized what was happening and hastily
yelled go. But by this time my dad was way
too hot and just kind of side stuff up into
(25:00):
the shot, waving his arms like a half baked ballerina.
If you watch the scene carefully you can actually see
the shots. He was really on fire, and by the
genuine fear and panic in his eyes, I hope you
guys carry on making knees for as long as humanly possible.
That is Freddie Turner from Oxford, England. Nice. And I
guess Freddie or Mollie didn't Saycy Jr. Was on fire?
(25:25):
And I think Jim Sheridan was a director of that movie,
if I remember correctly, So Jim Sherdan was the one
who say go oh, yeah, that's a pretty great listener mail, Yeah,
that's a good one. Was the dude's name, Freddie, Freddie
Freddie pretty turner in Oxford Englin. Cool Um. Well, if
you have a great story associated with something we've talked about,
as always, we want to hear it, You can tweak
(25:45):
to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
Discovery dot com and check out our website Stuff you
Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
(26:06):
of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com. M
Hey, everybody, This is Chuck and welcome to this week's
s Y s K Select episode all about allergies. And
the reason I picked this one is because, although I
think I'm on record in this episode even as saying
allergies don't tend to affect me, they beat me this
year and I've had a rough time with the pollen,
so uh kind of got me thinking about allergies again,
(00:21):
and I thought maybe you all could learn a little
something to enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you should know from
house stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charlestovi, Chuck Bryant looking particularly
(00:42):
smart to day's glasses. Check someone with the beard, by
the way, that's right. Kind of bibles of mine after
making video content, having an entire season of a television
show that people still say, wait, I thought it was
the other one. Yeah, it's not like this is you know,
the radio days of nineteen forties when you really didn't
know what people look like like worst and Orsten Wells
is a baby face I used to bearded up back
(01:05):
in the day. Yeah, I think of him as like
the in Citizen Kane early on and he was clean
shaving baby face, right, yes, so what are you saying?
How's this like, Citizen Kane? It's not okay, good one,
thanks man, Um, how you doing. I'm good, A little
(01:27):
under the weather, but not because of allergies. You're sure.
Well it's funny you said that because Emily was like,
you know, you may have some allergies, but sometimes you
think you're getting sick and it could just be allergies.
It definitely could be. Yeah, well she's super allergic to
all sorts of stuff. Yeah, just really bad allergies, not
like food allergies, season yes, seasonal pollen, dust fight, brag
(01:50):
weed and all that stuff. Yeah. Venom. Yeah, and I
grew up. Yeah, I grew up with allergies. I think
I've mentioned this before, um, like asthma and all kinds
of stuff, And I just grew out of it because
that faith healer. Yeah, I guess so, right, I got
bit by that rattlesnake and everything was all good. Yeah.
Venom it works both ways, right, Actually it does because
(02:11):
there's anti venom. Remember didn't we do one on what's
the most venomous or poisonous all in the world? That
was a good one. It was the country of Australia.
It was it's a dangerous place. Well, Chuck, I specifically
remember one time when we were at work and you
were attacked by a bee and I had to deliver
(02:32):
an een shot to your thigh. Remember the whole gang
was there, the whole gang. They carted you off in
an ambulance. It was really kind of traumatic for us.
But I got my magnum p I played that day,
so it kind of everything balanced out. Every all's well,
that ends well. But what's mind boggling is that you
don't even have an allergy two bees. So like what
(02:55):
happened there, Well, that was just TV. It was a
TV show. Yeah, let me troubled distinguishing reality from fiction
these days, other people are too. Had you um had
to be allergy? Though, after reading this article you would
know what was going on. Yeah, And I think we
even covered that in the B podcast, didn't We We
covered like anaphylactic shock a little bit. But this is
(03:16):
like what we're about to talking about is allergies. The
cellular basis of what constitutes an allergy, how they're created,
where they come from. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I tried
to stump Emily this morning because I thought I was
being a smart guy. And even though she has bad allergies, also,
I could bet you don't even know what they really are.
Oh yeah, she's like, um, yeah, it's an overreaction from
your immune system to proceed invader, almost exactly like that,
(03:39):
And now I felt really stupid. It's like, oh to
perceived invader. She loved it. She's like called me smart
guy and like followed me around the house, brow beating me. Yeah. Um,
so she's absolutely right, though, I mean, an allergy is
basically a case of mistaken identity as far as your
immune system is concerned. You know, um, you've got all
(03:59):
sorts of foreign invaders coming at you all the time,
and we have an immune system to handle these things.
But every once in a while, and it depends, they
think probably that you are um, genetically unfulfilled if you
have allergies. Oh it's not a complete genetic code or something. Yeah,
Like you have a little bit of information missing. Your
immune system has a little bit of information missing. And
(04:22):
so for example that in the article they used the
example of um, like, uh, shrimp, You can eat shrimp
and there's maybe a protein attached to it that your
body is like did he eat this or where did
this come from? Or he being attacked by shrimp exactly,
And they think probably that all allergies are triggered by proteins.
(04:45):
But it's a case of mistaken identity. So let's talk
about this. Let's let's get into the immune system a
little bit. How how the immune system handles foreign invaders
perceived or otherwise. That's right. Uh, well, I guess we
could start with something called lymphocyte. And um, you've probably
heard of things like T cells and B cells. Those
(05:06):
are lymphocytes. Yeah, T cells are if that's how they
determine whether you have HIV. I believe like if your
T cell count is low because HIV is a it's
a an Immunoh. So they are both white blood cells
and they are really important to the immune system. Um,
but they make mistakes sometimes, right, And I love the
(05:27):
way this Who wrote this, by the way, Steve Beach, freelancer,
never heard of him. I thought he did a great
job though, because he likened the being T cells to
custom agents systoms agents just like they go anywhere they
want in your body and they investigate cells and basically
are like, let me see your papers where you going.
(05:49):
It's like, what's the purpose of your visit? It's like
arizona in your body. Yeah. Yeah, Like they show up
anywhere they can, Like you said, they can make it anywhere.
They can pass through membranes and blood vessels and just
pop up and they go, who are you lymph notes? Yeah,
very important for them to visit the lymph notes. It
is very important because that's where they go back and
start producing antibodies. Right, that's right. When they see something
(06:12):
and they discover a cell and they say, hold on
a minute, you'll pap us are not in order, then
there's trouble and they launched. Basically they start the attack
at that point. And we haven't quite figured this out. Um. Basically,
what happens when a B cell, especially encounters in a
(06:34):
foreign body, which is called an antigen because they generate antibodies,
they trigger the generation of antibodies in your body. In
your body, so that's where antigen comes from. Um. The
B cell basically takes down all of its data and
then goes back up into the lymph nodes, and that
that B cell, that white blood cell, turns into a
(06:54):
plasma cell and starts churning out antibodies that are specifically
tailored to counteract that antigen that for an invader that
it encountered. Right, and our body um our bodies have
five types of antibodies, and they're called immunoglobulens. I love
that word. It's tough to get out, but it's a
great word. Yeah. Uh, we'll call them I G s
(07:15):
and UM. I G E is the one that's responsible
for allergic reactions. Yeah. And the reason that that one
is responsible for allergic reactions as we understand them, is
because I G ease immunoglobulin ease. Yeah. Right. Um. They
attached to mast cells and uh baso fills and those
(07:35):
are two different types of UM cells. A mass cell
is found in a connective tissue and basi phil is
um a type of white blood cell. But they share
the commonality that both of them contain histamine. And when
they are hijacked by an I G e UM antibody, uh,
they basically become little ticking time bombs. So, so think
(07:58):
about this when you're when you come in contact with
an anogen and your body goes off, that white blood
cell goes off and starts producing antibodies. That first moment
of contact creates what's called the sensitizing exposure, right, Yeah,
and it's it's basically a mistake. It is in the
case of allergies, yeah, because I mean, like, there's nothing
inherently dangerous about ragweed pollen, and your body can handle
(08:22):
b venom and shellfish, right. But it's there's some protein
in each of those that certain people's bodies if they
don't have the genetic code for their white blood cells
to say, oh you pass, You're fine, then there's that
case of mistaken identity. Like you said, So, once you
have that sensitizing exposure, the first time your body comes
across this protein and there's that mistaken identity, it starts
(08:45):
producing antibodies, and those antibodies attached in the case of
I G S to um baza fills and mass cells,
and they start circulating throughout your body just waiting for
the next time it encounters that anigin that it's been
specifically designed to interact with. That's right, And what happens
then they say, hey, I know you, you're not supposed
(09:08):
to be here. I'm going to release something called histamine,
which is can be a great thing in your body
because that's what's gonna you know. That's basically your arsenal
fighting this this invader. But it can be a bad
thing too, um if too much of it is released,
as as we will see in a little while. Yeah.
So when in uh, when an and body and I
(09:29):
g E connects to an antigen um, it's already connected
to a mass seller basophil. Remember those things are loaded
with with histamine, so they're basically taking them along for
the party, right. Yeah, So when it connects it, it
sends a signal to something called um compliment proteins I believe,
and those compliment proteins come along and say, oh cool,
(09:51):
a chain reaction we can start to fulfill. And they
start locking on and locking on and locking on, and
once a certain amount of them have kind of locked
together along into this um antibody anergin mast cell, basophil
joint um, the mass cell or the basi phil goes
bluey and all of a sudden you have histamine floating
(10:14):
through your body. That's right. It basically destroys those original
cells such that the histamine is just released and unduly released.
And this is called the allergic cascade. This is what
we think of so you you may have come in
contact with shrimp and then ten days later you ate shrimp.
I I know I had an an allergic reaction shrimp. Um.
(10:37):
Oh yeah, okay, yeah, spoiler all right, UM. And it
takes maybe seven to ten days for that sensitizing exposure.
From that time to the next time, you could have
the allergic cascade, because that's how long it takes for
your body produced the antibodies. But when that that allergic
cascade is kicked off and the histamine is released, that's
when the symptoms that we associate with UM the type
(11:00):
of of allergy come about. So like if you inhale
it um, your mucous membranes are gonna flare up. You
might get hives. Hives which are basically like histamines caused
your blood vessels in the area to leak, which makes
it swell. That's a hive. Uh sneezing, wheezing all that.
I could wheeze right now if you want, if you
(11:21):
let me, but it would be really gross. Let's here,
I don't want to um because people would say, oh, man, chuck,
get to a sanitarium. But I'm sick. I don't have allergies. Sanitary. Yeah,
remember that. Yeah, like the Kellogg's thing. Yeah, sure, battle creek, Uh, nausea, diarrhea,
little vomiting. Maybe that's like you know, I think that's
the scale from least reaction to most. If you're vomiting,
(11:46):
then you've ingested something that you're really allergic to. Yeah.
You can become swollen usually like the part of your
body or the type of reaction you have, right like
where if you if your skin swells, if your arms swells,
you probably didn't inhale all learn just that it probably
came in contact with your skin, like a break in
your skin. Yeah. It depends on how you ingest it
(12:06):
and how your body reacts to it because it's different
for everyone, and severity obviously. But speaking of severity, it
can get really bad, which you talked about in the
B episode. Um, if this cascade, of this allergic cascade
UH is allowed to continue and you have enough of
a reaction to it, you have enough antibodies attached to
(12:27):
mass cells and bass it fills that a ton of
histamine is released, you can be in big trouble. You
can go into what's called anaphylactic shock. Yeah, and UH,
proceeding that you can have anaphylaxis, which is not quite
as bad. It's a it's a bad reaction, but it's
not the full blown shock. If you're in full blown
shock mode, then you could die easily and within minutes.
(12:50):
Even if you have let's say, like a peanut allergy
and you accidentally eat those peanuts. Unless you get that
injection of epinephrin that's gonna open those airways and restrict
the blood vessels back to their normal levels, then you
could be a goner, like really soon, right, And that's
called scary. That's called a systemic reaction where your whole
system is involved in this. And um, you're if you're
(13:11):
Since histamine dilates the blood vessels, your blood pressure can drop. Um.
It also causes swelling. Uh so like if your airways swollen,
that tends to close it off, which means it's tough
for you to breathe. Yeah, you could starve your brain
and kidneys of oxygen. Um and you know, oregon failure
can happen. And I think what they say, several hundred
(13:32):
people die in the United States alone each year. Yeah,
because we didn't cover this in the UM in the
TV episode about bees where I delivered that from Penn
and saved your life, if you'll remember. I do remember. Um.
But apparently the effects of the epic pen last ten
to twenty minutes. Yeah, I didn't realize it was that short. Yeah,
so we should have had you outfitted with like a
(13:53):
whole belt of those things. I thought you were just
good to go once you have the EpiPen shot. Apparently
not so. I think it's just like, hey, let's stave
off death until we can get you to a hospital.
I think so too. But you have to do it
early enough so that it can it can have the
effect of counteracting that's allergic reaction. Uh. And you you,
if it's longer than ten to twenty minutes to get
(14:14):
to the hospital, you should probably have more in one pen.
But even if you've survived, your brain and your kidneys
being starved of oxygen, you can suffer long term damage
from going into anaphylactic shock. Yeah. I would be a
freak if I had this possibility existing in my life.
I would have an EpiPen in my car and my
you know, in each room of my house. I would
(14:34):
not take any chances. And what about like a peanut
allergy too, It's gotta be so easy to come in
contact with that. Yeah. Well, and we've mentioned that time
on the plane when they said you can't even open
peanuts on this flight, and we had people right in
they were like, yeah, dude, that's a that could seriously happen, right,
And I understand that. What's crazy to me is like,
if you fly Delta, they'll give you a peanuts all
day long. Well not if someone says that they're allergic.
(14:57):
That's the point. Yeah, I guess. So this is a
delta for And they said, I'm sorry, everyone, no peanuts
today because what's the delt. I thought was towel E
is allergic peanuts. Yeah, Everybody's like, oh God, I want
my peanuts. I hate Yeah, I guess I'll just eat
Press pretzels and Biscott cookies. Dirt dirt. Okay, So all right,
(15:20):
let's say you have allergies, or let's say you think
you have allergies and you want to go in and
find out for sure. There are a couple of ways
that they can that they can test this out, honey, Yeah,
and and run into a beehive. Uh no, you would
do what's called the scratch test. And I've never had
(15:41):
one of these. Emily's had one, and she also does immunotherapy,
which we'll get to. But they apply a diluted extract
of you know, different kinds of allergens to like your
back or your arm, and then they scratch you with
a needle and they see what happens, and if it
becomes swollen and red, then they say, you know, I
think you're allergic to ragweed because we just put some
(16:03):
on your body and scratched it. They can also do
blood tests and search for specific antigens. Yeah, that's better
for kids, I think, yeah, because it can cause a
sensitizing event in a kid if you expose them to it.
Because everybody knows their genes are just stupid. Yeah, they're
like a very um susceptible to influence. I guess, which
(16:24):
is weird to me. So here's the thing. Does that
mean that it's impossible to die from your first beasting?
That at what is possible or impossible? Because if there
has to be a sensitizing event, how would you come
in contact with the venom other than to be stung?
How would you become sensitized? I was looking all over
the internet, sor and I think One of the things
(16:46):
that kind of found well doing additional research for this
episode is that we have a pretty good idea of
how allergies work, but it's definitely not complete yet. Yeah,
I mean when you're on the cellular level, I'm sure
there are still some mysteries to be had. But they say,
it's like, because one of your questions was, how do
they identify that for an invader? And I was happy
(17:07):
to just say they identify for an invader, right, and
how do they how do they take down its information
and then go back to the to the lymph node
and start producing an animboo. They had a pin and
pad and they had a little golf cart. They did
a police sketch. Yeah, that's the way I set um.
So you've got scratched therapy, blood tests, they both work,
they're okay. Um. And then if you if they say
(17:30):
you know what you are you're allergic to somethings Y
and Z. There's basically three things they recommend. The first
is to avoid that thing whatever it is, sure and
if that's shell fish or peanuts, then you're pretty good
shape because that's pretty easy to avoid in most cases.
You would think, have you ever had a shrimp allergy.
Shrimp is pretty delicious, No, but it's it's easier to
(17:52):
avoid than pollen, let's say, because pollen's everywhere, especially here
in the South. So if you're allergic to pollen, there's
no avoiding it. I mean there's cars that all the
car is in the spring in the South, or yellow.
Every car's painting the streets run yellow. Literally. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
so you would take medication accorded coasteroid. You might walk
around with an F and f rompen depending on what
(18:12):
you are allergic to. Um, you know that kind of thing.
And then the third one is what you said Emily
was doing and what I've done before too, which is
immunotherapy done this I think? So, I mean I undertook
the process of immunotherapy by myself and it seems to
have worked. I was about to say, did a doctor
give you injections at point in your life? Tell me
(18:34):
about Emily's experience. Well, she she does the standard immunotherapy
where she goes into to get her allergy shots once
a month, I think, And um, they start you out
on a on a low uh dose that's like a
basically a weak delusion of these antigens. And they they
injected in her body and just build that up over
(18:56):
time to increase her her immune response I guess right.
And then over time, so this is what they think
happens over time. Either the body possibly gets it's genetic
information filled in enough so that it's it's like, oh,
was my face red because this wasn't actually a foreign invader,
(19:16):
It's just a shrimp protein UM. And or they believe
that another UH and a body I g G, which
acts as kind of like a blocking antibody that prevents
an allergic reaction, UM starts to build up as a
as a result of immunotherapy. We should say, I think
(19:37):
immunotherapy is still fairly controversial, is it. I believe so,
because it's introducing, you know, a potentially dangerous thing into
a human being. And it's not like if you ask
somebody if honey as a good immunotherapy, Logically it should
make sense. If you use local honey, very very local honey,
it's going to contain some of the same pollen um
(19:59):
that you're supposed to that you're allergic to in it,
and so when you eat it, when you ingested, it's
like taking that low level and it should be doing
the same thing as that, you know, taking injections from
the doctor, but it's more delicious and it takes a
long time. At we's been at it for she was
at it for a couple of years without virtually no
uh success, right, so it takes Has it been helping
(20:22):
though at all? I think so, because she still has
bad allergies, but they used to be way worse. But
she's been on these shots now for like, I mean,
she did it when she was a kid and then
she's been on it again for like five years. Probably
it's been a while. So I've I've had one serious.
It wasn't even serious, but it was my distinct allergic reaction.
(20:42):
And it was shrimp once and I ate it and
you mean, just like why are you red? And like
what are those red dots all over you? What's going on?
And uh, I figured out I was. I was having
an allergic reaction to shrimp. So I've never had before, right,
and I love shrimp. And I tried it the next day,
tried a little by a shrimp kind of had a
similar reaction. So I was like, something's going on here.
(21:03):
So I decided that I was going to get myself
over my shrimp allergy. Right. Have you ever had shrimp chips? Uh? Yes,
They're delicious. They're delicious. They're like little kind of potato
chip French fries with their shrimp flavor because they have
shrimp dust on them, like sexual powdered shrimp shrimp dust.
(21:24):
So I started like very eating little amounts of shrimp chip,
and then over the over time I would eat more
whole bags of them at a time, you know. Um,
and then finally I get to the point where I
could eat shrimping it. I don't know if that really
cured me or if that was just a fluke, like
maybe that shrimp was just a local type of shrimp
and Carolinas or something like. But um, that's that's my
(21:46):
immunotherapy story. Well, you can eat shrimp now like Gangbusters,
So yeah, and I do, do you really? Yeah, whenever
I can. I like shrimp. I'm trying to make up
for lost time because I spent like three years, two
years without eating shrimp. So be where prawns and Trump
of the world, gosh, number eat you live? Will you know?
(22:07):
Okay that's gross. No, it's not people do that. Um,
I guess that's it. Yeah, that is allergies. And I
bet the reason I quizzed Emily is because I think
a lot of people who have allergies don't even understand
the core concepts. And uh yeah, hopefully now you do that.
It's a case of mistaken identity. It's so awesome. Yeah,
(22:27):
and your your DNA is dumb or incomplete. Okay, UM,
if you like this, you should go check out how
allergies work. You can type them in the search bar
how stuff works dot com. You can also look up
another article I wrote about using honey for immunotherapy. That's
pretty interesting. Um. Probably like honey allergies maybe would be
(22:49):
too good words of putting the search bar for that one. Um,
and I said the search bar twice, which means we're
gonna have to listener males. Huh just one o. Well, first,
before we do that, how about a word from our
sponsor time for listener mal Okay, I'm gonna call this
in the name of the fire guys. I just listened
(23:10):
to your cast on stunt men stunt women, let's just
say stunt people, and I was reminded of his story.
I thought you might like to hear my dad as
an actor and way back in the nineties, he was
in a film called In the Name of the Father,
Remember that, Oh yeah, with Daniel day Lewis. Right, great
movie is that his dad? Um? He said? It stars
Abraham Lincoln or Daniel day Lewis. In the film he
(23:34):
played and this is one of my favorite like movies
from that year. By the way, it's about the I
r A, wasn't it. Yeah? It was about like a
wrongfully imprisoned um group of friends basically that they suspected
as being like bombers. I don't want to give ways
too much, okay, but there is a prison in the film.
He played a prison guard who gets set on fire
(23:56):
by some pretty nasty inmates. So I guess there's a
fire too in the Guard. In the Guard, what happens
next served as a warning for any actor who decides
their up for performing their own stunts. The director decide
of my dad could do some flailing and running with
his arms on fire, and that a stunt professional would
do the more intense full body fire shots. We like
(24:17):
we said in the Stunt Person podcast, like the fire thing.
You're always running, you going, what what do you doing?
You're on fire? Do you stand there? Like? Can someone
put me out. Some people do Buddhist monks just sit there.
Well that, yeah, that's different. I'm ready on the one.
They wrapped up his arms, covered them in jelly, and
set them ablaze. But what my dad had failed to
(24:38):
realize is that the stuntmen do not wait for anyone
to say action. As a result, he just stood there
on fire, waiting for someone to say he could go,
while it's getting hotter and hotter with each passing second.
Fortunately the director eventually realized what was happening and hastily
yelled go. But by this time my dad was way
too hot and just kind of side stuff up into
(25:00):
the shot, waving his arms like a half baked ballerina.
If you watch the scene carefully you can actually see
the shots. He was really on fire, and by the
genuine fear and panic in his eyes, I hope you
guys carry on making knees for as long as humanly possible.
That is Freddie Turner from Oxford, England. Nice. And I
guess Freddie or Mollie didn't Saycy Jr. Was on fire?
(25:25):
And I think Jim Sheridan was a director of that movie,
if I remember correctly, So Jim Sherdan was the one
who say go oh, yeah, that's a pretty great listener mail, Yeah,
that's a good one. Was the dude's name, Freddie, Freddie
Freddie pretty turner in Oxford Englin. Cool Um. Well, if
you have a great story associated with something we've talked about,
as always, we want to hear it, You can tweak
(25:45):
to us at s Y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
Discovery dot com and check out our website Stuff you
Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
(26:06):
of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com. M
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