Causes and Risk Factors of Allergies
Gain insights into allergy triggers, risk factors, and prevention strategies.
Risk Factors For Allergy
There are internal (related to the human body) and external risk factors for the development of allergy. Because of the rising incidence of allergies in recent years, external factors, such as infections, environmental pollution, and changes in diet, are given utmost importance.
Allergic diseases are often passed down through genes from parents to their children. They don’t inherit a particular allergy but rather a tendency of the immune system to develop one. The risk of disease varies with age: children are an at-risk group, with boys having higher chances of being allergic compared to girls. The majority of people with pollinosis and asthma developed allergies at the age of 10.
Chronic stress can increase the risk of developing an allergy and make your allergic reactions worse. This is due to the fact that the nervous system influences the activity of the immune system. Reducing stress could cut down allergy symptoms in allergy-prone people.
The hygiene hypothesis states that people are now living in extremely clean environments. They lack exposure to various pathogens, thus not giving the immune system enough “material” to train by fighting off the allergens. As a result, it attacks harmless antigens and launches a defense response to pollen, food proteins, and else. This theory was introduced to explain the increased occurrence of allergy diseases during the industrialization period and higher incidence rates in industrialized countries.