Question: how are allergies formed or why/how does the body becom allergict to certain types of food?

Tim Millar answered on 13 Jun 2011:

You can have allergies to lots of different foods and different things in the environment, like pollen, house dust mites and animal hair. People who are allergic see the world in a different way to the non allergics. Our bodies own defensive system usually takes care of foreign substances, but for some reason, allergic people see some foods as bad and mounts a response to them. On the first exposure, all the machinery of the immune system is switched on leading to the production of antibodies against something within the food. The next time you see that food, the body is ready to release lots of substances that lead to the allergic reaction.

For pollen, histamine is one of the main drivers of the itch released from a mast cell, a special cell usually directed against worms, so we use anti histamines to reduce the symptoms.

If you can avoid the food, then you should be okay, but sometimes we need to use “steroid” drugs to switch the immune system off, but we can’t use these drugs all the time because of the side effects.

Why the body becomes allergic after many years of easting the smae food is still not fully known. Sometimes, a virus infection, like the cold or flu, can confuse the bodies immune system so that after the virus, you suddenly become allergic. Other times you have underlying genetics inherited from your parents which make it more likely that you are allergic. Sometimes is the combination of all of these things and more.