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Asked by eleanorbeedles to Lily, Mark, Paul, Sarah on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
Question: Why do some people have hayfever, and others don't? and what is it?
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Mark Roberts answered on 23 Jun 2010:
Hayfever is an allergy and what it means is your immune system / body has gone slightly crazy – in the sense that it is detecting something that is harmless (pollen in this case) as something that is dangerous and either mounting an immune response or causing sneezing etc.
Why do some have and some don’t – well it depends on if their immune system reacts to pollen or not – at the moment we don’t really know why people become allergic and why there are more people with allergies now – it’s something scientists are researching
Hope that helps
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Sarah Bardsley answered on 23 Jun 2010:
People have hayfever when they are allergic to particles in the air like grass pollen. Or tree pollen (which I’m allergic to). So when hayfever suffers are exposed to these particles, their eyes, noses and throats become irritated; eyes can stream and itch, noses run and throats get sore. Its not fun! It could be a genetic condition – that is, hayfever is written into your genes. Or some people think hayfever is caused when babies live in such clean environments they are not exposed enough to dirt so their immune system is not strong enough to cope later in life and they get hey-fever.
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Lily Asquith answered on 23 Jun 2010:
It’s an allergy. I don’t know what causes it but I saw something on TV the other night that said there is a place where noone has any allergies but lots of the people there have hookworm. So now people are using hookworm as a treatment for hayfever, and it works!
Medicine is quite mysterious. More of an art than a science, I think!
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