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The interpretation of allergies must be in keeping with the evolution of today's scientific knowledge. Allergy must no longer be considered as an illness, but as a warning sign of a complex imbalance that must be rehabilitated.
An ever increasing number of people have complex allergic reactions in which the sum of the response signals to different allergens involves all of the body's systems and organs.
Therefore it isn't easy to define an allergy or a hypersensitivity in this moment of scientific evolution; however we can, generally speaking, outline the essential differences between an allergy and a food intolerance that, although different, still represent a reactive expression of the same immune system. The most recent scientific evolutions have come to define allergy as a signal, not as an illness.
In order to completely understand an allergic condition we need to ask ourselves why, in the course of thousands of years, natural selection didn't provide for the elimination and disappearance of those genes that would favor the outbreak of allergic phenomena.
There's a fundamental difference between "defect" and "defense", and to explain it I'll use the same examples proposed by two of the world's most important scholars in the field of evolution applied to medicine: the Americans R.M. Nesse and G. Williams, authors of "Nothing to sneeze at". A cerebral aneurism (that is, the pathological dilation of one of the arteries that nourish the brain) can surely be considered as a defect, and being able to prevent it or eliminate it would certainly be an advantage for the body. A cough, on the other hand, represents a defense mechanism that allows the body to begin to expel the foreign matter or gnat from the airways where it has entered. It's obvious that sedating the cough in this case would cause harm, allow the gnat to remain in the lungs and facilitate the outbreak of possible reactions. While the correction of a defect is generally a positive thing, the elimination of a defense can be catastrophic for the body.
When we face allergy we must understand whether it represents a defense (or a defense signal), or a defect. The answer to this question can help us choose whether to light-heartedly use an antihistamine or cortisone, or whether to use them with caution and only when necessary, in the attempt to re-establish the balance of the body's organic responses through the use of healthy habits and different foods. There are also some other recent studies on the role of hypersensitivities (that are of true philosophical depth) that confirm allergic phenomena's role of "defense and warning signal".
Polly Matzinger's theory ("The danger theory") has already become a scientific certainty and many researchers have confirmed what she proposed many years earlier. The immune system's cells are not only responsible for recognizing substances that are foreign and different from ourselves. Their main function is that of creating tolerance for substances (pollens, particles, foods) that can be good for us, and react against those things that can harm us. This also involves the memory of our species, that which we transmit, hidden somewhere inside of our chromosomes. Therefore, the immune system, by way of its reaction, allows us in a certain sense to distinguish between good and bad, also retaining a memory of certain types of experiences that our ancestors lived.
On the other hand, the theory by the American Biologist Margie Profet sees IgE production as the last defense bastion, especially with regard to respiratory allergies, that joins together with all of the other defenses that were previously used. The production and subsequent activation of specific antibodies like IgE makes us cough, tear, sneeze, evacuate; these are phenomena like coughing, asthma, allergic diarrhea, rhino-conjunctivitis that could be the body's attempt to eliminate possible intruders or toxic substances or something that is "perceived" with the same characteristics. But the innovative part of Profet's theory underlines that the differences between people's responses is due to a particular characterization of the immune responses (the technical term is "imprinting") which actually derives from their contact with potentially allergenic substances.
As a matter of fact, according to Profet our lymphocytes acknowledge both the body's internal state and the substances that we are exposed to in the external world at the same time (and this also explains many cross-reaction phenomena that are being discovered today). In reality, this simultaneous interpretation creates a sort of automatic link between one condition and another (link). For example, a person can be suffering from gastroenteritis (and therefore the body is intoxicated and inflammation is present) and at the same time, his mucosa can perceive an "inert" substance like pollen, cat saliva or a particular food. At that point, a link between the two conditions is formed and regardless of which one (whether an intoxication condition or pollen) appears, the lymphocytes trigger a defensive type of allergic or inflammatory reaction
In practical terms the lymphocyte, which is the cell that guides the immune system and is in constant contact with the central nervous system, perceives danger (the gastroenteritis) and activates itself to figure out which of the environmental substances present could justify this danger. If it recognizes the mites or pollens that are present, even though up to that moment they were never linked to any clinical disturbance, it identifies them as the possible culprits for the discomfort and prepares itself to face them in an appropriate manner at the next encounter. This is precisely what happens in the subsequent phase, which is usually (if we're referring to seasonal pollens) about a year after the first encounter with the pollen. And when this reaction to the pollen or animal allergen does occur, the reaction mechanism is the same with which the body would react against a particular toxin or foreign substance: it would try to expel them.
This in part explains how hypersensitivity phenomena begin in older people (a case which is growing ever more frequent), following toxic phenomena, surgery or significant pharmaceutical treatment. This is a situation that is often found in clinical practice but not yet fully explained. The same studies by Rita Levi Montalcini, who received the Nobel prize for Medicine in 1986 for her work on NGF (Nerve Growth Factor), established that this "allergenic" substance is produced by the body as a response to emotional situations in which the survival of one's living habits is challenged. As she eloquently explained at the 2001 European Conference on allergology in Berlin, during a lesson conducted by 7 Nobel winners, the body produces NGF when it experiences situations in which its vital priorities are changed. She referred to these situations as "Danger of Vitality", using the examples of mourning, betrayal, estrangement, disenchantment, moving, mobbing and other situations in which the body, in a holistic manner, no longer recognizes itself.
The NGF cytokine causes an incredible increase in allergic reactivity, increasing the levels of histamine that are in circulation. In a way that I would describe as almost picturesque, a person's allergic response appears like an emergency light (rash, hives, skin blotches, dermatitis, etc.) that attests to the fact that it is truly a signal of a general state of complex and articulated imbalance and that this signal must be heeded.
Doctor Attilio Speciani
Clinical Allergist and Immunologist
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Luigi Oreste Speciani 
