allergy stressors

No reference to allergy and environmental medicine could be complete without some reference to Hans Selye’s hypothesis of stress adaptation. It is something that environmental medicine doctors have taken very much to heart, because it seems to fit our daily observations and explains a great many of the phenomena we encounter. The fact that so much to heart, because it seems to fit our daily observations and explains a great many of the phenomena we encounter. The fact that so much experience matches the theory suggests that it is ‘true’. Hans Selye, a Viennese by birth who moved to Canada and practiced medicine in his adopted country, began with the observation that many people ill from different causes had similar symptoms. These were general symptoms, which seemed common to all afflictions, such as pallor, fatigue, loss of appetite, vague pains and a coated tongue. Selye, still a medical student, likened this to the ‘syndrome of being ill’ and he couldn’t’ understand why his teachers didn’t pay more attention to these symptoms: they were obviously important, since everybody got them, no matter the illness.

No reference to allergy and environmental medicine could be complete without some reference to Hans Selye’s hypothesis of stress adaptation. It is something that environmental medicine doctors have taken very much to heart, because it seems to fit our daily observations and explains a great many of the phenomena we encounter. The fact that so much to heart, because it seems to fit our daily observations and explains a great many of the phenomena we encounter. The fact that so much experience matches the theory suggests that it is ‘true’. Hans Selye, a Viennese by birth who moved to Canada and practiced medicine in his adopted country, began with the observation that many people ill from different causes had similar symptoms. These were general symptoms, which seemed common to all afflictions, such as pallor, fatigue, loss of appetite, vague pains and a coated tongue. Selye, still a medical student, likened this to the ‘syndrome of being ill’ and he couldn’t’ understand why his teachers didn’t pay more attention to these symptoms: they were obviously important, since everybody got them, no matter the illness.

It is implicit in the body load model that you will be able to tolerate a definite level of each stressor and only by exceeding that do you move into overload. These limits may shift under different circumstances but there is always a line, drawn somewhere, which you must not cross if you want to remain well Bad allergens, then, are the ones of which even a tiny quantity puts you over the limit. Mild allergies are those which need a big dose of an allergen to come into effect. Probably mild allergies would not arise at all if the allergens were encountered in normal quantities, but several together can add up to trouble. It is even possible to imagine a scale and assign arbitrary numerical values. If your threshold limit is, say 10 points, a 12 allergy would put you straight into symptoms. But one or two 3s taken together would still have no effect; two 4s and a 3 might, so on. This can be represented diagrammatically.

It is implicit in the body load model that you will be able to tolerate a definite level of each stressor and only by exceeding that do you move into overload. These limits may shift under different circumstances but there is always a line, drawn somewhere, which you must not cross if you want to remain well Bad allergens, then, are the ones of which even a tiny quantity puts you over the limit. Mild allergies are those which need a big dose of an allergen to come into effect. Probably mild allergies would not arise at all if the allergens were encountered in normal quantities, but several together can add up to trouble. It is even possible to imagine a scale and assign arbitrary numerical values. If your threshold limit is, say 10 points, a 12 allergy would put you straight into symptoms. But one or two 3s taken together would still have no effect; two 4s and a 3 might, so on. This can be represented diagrammatically.

It is implicit in the body load model that you will be able to tolerate a definite level of each stressor and only by exceeding that do you move into overload. These limits may shift under different circumstances but there is always a line, drawn somewhere, which you must not cross if you want to remain well Bad allergens, then, are the ones of which even a tiny quantity puts you over the limit. Mild allergies are those which need a big dose of an allergen to come into effect. Probably mild allergies would not arise at all if the allergens were encountered in normal quantities, but several together can add up to trouble. It is even possible to imagine a scale and assign arbitrary numerical values. If your threshold limit is, say 10 points, a 12 allergy would put you straight into symptoms. But one or two 3s taken together would still have no effect; two 4s and a 3 might, so on. This can be represented diagrammatically.