What is going on inside the body in allergic diseases?

Some diseases are caused by allergies. For example, hay fever, asthma, and atopic dermatitis are very popular.

Allergic diseases are caused when the body's immune response recognizes something that is not normally recognized as a foreign substance as a foreign substance.

When the immune response occurs, some symptoms appear in the body, but what happens in the body is the same for all allergic diseases.

Immune response (white blood cells) and oxidative stress

The cells involved in the immune response are white blood cells. There are many types of these white blood cells.

For more information about the role of white blood cells and allergic reactions, see my previous article: "Is Hay Fever Related to Oxidative Stress?".

Immune reaction is an uncontrollable condition in which white blood cells (= immune cells), which work to expel foreign substances from the body, work excessively against things that they do not need to work against, and the balance of immune cells is imbalanced. This imbalance causes immune cells to work excessively, and the symptoms that result from this reaction include runny nose, asthma, and dermatitis.

Inflammation occurs where the symptoms are present. This is because when there is damage or a foreign substance, white blood cells gather in large numbers and release inflammatory substances and oxidative stress substances that cause inflammation to return to the original state. In other words, when white blood cells gather, inflammation occurs, and where inflammation occurs, inflammatory substances and oxidative stress substances are always present.

The Relationship between Inflammation and Oxidative Stress

Where inflammation occurs, there are always inflammatory substances and oxidative stress.

Inflammation → oxidative stress → inflammation → oxidative stress

This means that the cycle of inflammation → oxidative stress → inflammation → oxidative stress is going on all the time. Therefore, if we can lower oxidative stress, we can break this cycle.

So, even if white blood cells gather, if we can reduce oxidative stress, we can reduce the effects of inflammatory substances. In short, if inflammation is eliminated, symptoms will become less and less frequent.

At present, it is clear that 80% to 90% of allergic diseases can be alleviated by simply reducing oxidative stress. There is a huge relationship between allergic diseases and oxidative stress.