By Dr. Francesco Candeloro

Allergy is a disorder of the immune system that overreacts to certain substances known as allergens. The reactions can be more or less serious, depending on the allergen that causes them. Let's find out better.

How allergy symptoms develop

Causes and symptoms of allergy

An allergy is an immune system disorder characterized by exaggerated reactions to substances commonly called allergens. These substances can be of food origin, but more often they are breathed into the environment, as in the case of pollen, dust mite or even the hair of certain animals.

Then there are some allergies, sometimes very serious due to the intensity of their reactions, resulting from insect bites such as bees or wasps. In all cases, the allergy is caused by an immunomediated mechanism that involves IgE class antibodies and some cells containing the chemical mediator of allergic reactions - namely histamine - called mast cells .

These reactions are often the consequence of a particular inheritance of the allergic subject, which often shows a certain hyperreactivity, mainly skin, since the neonatal or infantile age ( atopic dermatitis ).

Allergic manifestations vary from forms of hives, more or less transient, to annoying rhinitis and conjunctivitis, frequent especially in spring and summer or even more important asthma crises, which limit the quality of life of many individuals due to the respiratory problems they cause .

Then there are very rapid and immediate reactions, such as the anaphylittacious shock, which put at risk the survival of the subject in which they occur, but also so-called retarded forms, with predominantly cutaneous localization, the most known of which is caused by nickel, metal present in many foodstuffs, ornaments and ornaments.

You can learn more about all natural remedies for asthma

Homeopathic remedies for allergy

Traditional medicine treats allergies essentially trying to remove the person from the substance that triggers them, and at the same time giving them drugs, mostly symptomatic, that aim to mitigate the symptoms, such as antihistamines and cortisone drugs.

In some few selected cases, desensitizing therapy can be useful, which uses, in small doses, the substance to which you are allergic, in a sort of therapeutic procedure that closely resembles the use of vaccines to prevent some important infectious diseases.

Homeopathy in these cases acts both in acute, through a series of remedies that are chosen for peculiar characteristics that differentiate subjects affected by the same disorders, and as a prevention treatment that comes to consider and treat hyperreactivity, to substances that are often only weakly irritating, as part of a more complex picture in which it is often found also at a general level and above all in character.

In the latter case, therefore, the disorder is framed in a broader range of symptoms, and benefits from so-called constitutional treatments since allergic disorders often manifest themselves from childhood and / or adolescence, precisely as an expression of particular, and exaggerated, reactivity of the organism still, however, simply in relation to its physical conformation or anatomical constitution, precisely.

However in the acute and transitory forms, among the most frequently used remedies we remember:

• Apis, in case of manifestations of redness of the skin associated with intense itching, which is improved by cold applications, exactly the opposite of Urtica Urens in which instead the symptoms of redness and local itching are aggravated by contact with baths and cold applications;
• Allium Cepa, in the allergic forms that involve the upper respiratory tract and the eyes, where, however, an abundant secretion and excoriating the margins of the nose and an equally abundant but not irritating lacrimation prevails, the whole worsened in the evening and in closed environments;
• Euprhasia, when ocular phenomena are prevalent, associated however with irritating tearing, this time, and intense photophobia.

Finally we mention three remedies for asthma crises :

• Ipeca, characterized by spasmodic cough associated with nausea and vomiting;
• Arsenicum album, which characteristically presents crises between 1 and 3 at night, associated with intense agitation;
• Kali Carbonicum, in which crises occur, instead, between 2 and 4 am, and improve by expelling dense and greyish secretions, with a spherical shape.