Is it possible to develop an allergy to anything?

edited by Me: I should have read the question more closely. I misunderstood and don’t know the answer :-)

yes, of course there is. even in animals too. they can be allergic to their own skin.

What about coal?

yes, even coal. My uncle is.

I see. Interesting. As coal is said to be the very cornerstone of any materia. (right?)

Water?

Well coal contains a lot of carbon, and carbon is one of the fundamental building blocks in the world, yes. But I wouldn’t say that coal is the very cornerstone of any materia, no. Where did you hear this?

there are some that are allegic to water too.

This puts it into a very interesting angle, from a philosophical point of view.

For instance, being allergic to coal means allergic to, say, diamonds… (I’m just saying.)

re: dynamicduo. I only think I heard someone saying (must have been my father, if I recall correct), something like everything is “built” (as in consists) of the element coal.

Since an allergy is an inappropriate immune system response to proteins in the allergen, there are many things you simply cannot be allergic to.

(whoa, this question is gaining momentum!)

Sadly that is incorrect. Coal is not an element. This is what coal’s elemental structure looks like. As you can see it’s a very complex structure. Furthermore, it is incorrect that coal would be in everything – the requirements for coal are pretty much time, pressure, and dead material, massive amounts. There’s no way coal could be in everything, nothing lives long enough to start producing coal by itself.

Carbon, on the other hand, is pretty much everything you say it is – it’s in every known life form and is the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass. Hence why I think the material you’re actually talking about is carbon, not coal.

re: dynamicduo

I was mistaken! Lost in translation. Of course I meant carbon. A dictionary lookup is all there takes to prevent misnomers. Too bad it takes too long sometimes.

Which leads us to the crucial point in this topic: will you be able to develop an allergy to carbon, then?

aha, shilolo to the rescue ;)

i dont know but i just found out last summer that i have a latex fruit syndrome. If i have tomatoes and wear latex gloves within 24 hours, ill wake up the next day with rashes from pale pink to blood red.
When i was very young this happened to me, but my parents weren’t as interested as me to learn more about it.

The answer is NO. Lot of people claim they are allergic to lots of things, many of which are impossible to develop an allergy to. When people develop allergic or autoimmune reactions, they tend to be to proteins or other large macromolecules, like complex carbohydrates or lipids (fats). However, you cannot be allergic to many molecules that are either fundamental building blocks of the body or too small to develop an antibody reaction to. These include things like water (H2O), oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, iron, and so on. With respect to proteins, I can think of many for which I have never heard or seen an allergic reaction, such as human hemoglobin.

I think lay people often confuse any adverse reaction with an allergy. For example, I have lots of patients tell me they are allergic to aspirin because it has caused stomach bleeding (bleeding is a known effect of aspirin) or that they are allergic to morphine (whose structure is so closely related to human opioids as to make it very unlikely to be truly allergic to it) because of itching (another side effect). In summary, you can become allergic to a lot of things, but, in conversely, not all “allergies” that people complain about are real.

i wouldn’t know that far…physical science never came to me….its what were studying in school and its too confusing….

FYI, in the latex-fruit syndrome, you don’t need to be exposed to both antigens at (or around) the same time. The basis of the syndrome is that your body has developed a certain type and class of antibody that cross reacts with allergens in latex and fruit.

ooo whatever i told you science doesn’t come to me

It also doesn’t help that the only way to get someone to not insist you eat food you don’t like is to claim an allergy to it—and that some people, even upon being told that you have a food allergy, insist on serving it to you anyway.

My own experience in this area is that I have a food allergy to coconut—not the oil, thankfully, because that’s almost as common as high fructose corn syrup, but something in the milk and the meat. And it’s also a mild allergy, as these things go—it’s not a life-threatening reaction, but it’s extremely unpleasant (think bad food poisoning) and it will take me out of commission for anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days.

The number of people who interpret “I am allergic to coconut milk and meat” as “I don’t like coconut, but I enjoy it when people try to convince me otherwise” is astounding. It’s almost as if they’re taking it as a challenge—sneaking coconut into my food without me realizing it, so that when I don’t have an allergic reaction, they can say “I told you so! It’s psychosomatic!” Except that anyone moronic enough to intentionally feed someone a food he is allergic to is unlikely to have a vocabulary that extends to the word psychosomatic.

@ cwilbur….i should be a psychiatrist or something because i have this sense of when things are psychosomatic.

One day in our school, someone almost fainted because it was hot. Then, a teacher said “if you think you’re going to faint, then sit down”. so, like…½ my class sat down because they supposedly “about to faint” I seriously thought that the only person who really was about to faint is the 1st person.

I don’t know, I’m just suspicious

It’s pretty @#$% hard to be a psychiatrist when “science doesn’t come to you.”

I meant Physical Science. (Read the quote i wrote before that.)

I have sensitive skin and some auto-immune problems that act like allergies, but are not truly allergies. Water and sweat give me hives…but I’m not actually allergic to them. But, it is far easier to say you’re allergic because people understand that. I am truly allergic to codeine (throat swells shut!), but every time I tell a doctor that they question it because of all the people who say they are allergic but really mean they get an upset stomach if they take it. We need to refine our vocabulary for these things!

If my friend eats strawberries, her throat will swell shut. Poor you and my friend——that is one of the most feared ways of me dying—> lack of breath.