• Question: why do peole get phobias and allegies is this to do with microbes ?

    Asked by o0adam0wade0o to MarkF, Mark, Michael, Panos, Sarah on 20 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Mark Fogg

      Mark Fogg answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Allergies are the immune system being overactive and reacting to harmless things as though they could be bad.
      Phobias are psychological reactions to something that makes you feel scared for no reason. Heights are not scary, it’s the fear of falling off that is scary. You would get a better answer from a psychologist for that one I’m afraid.

    • Photo: Panos Soultanas

      Panos Soultanas answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Adam,

      I would say no, phobias and allergies do not have mcuh to do directly with most allergies and phobias. I guess phobias may be related to some early life traumatic experience and allergies are mainly genetically based and also depend a lot on the actual environment one lives in.

    • Photo: Sarah Burl

      Sarah Burl answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      Phobias and allergies are quite different. Phobias can be caused by a past experience that affects how you respond to something in the future or in some cases can be genetic. Allergies could also be genetic but are associated with a specific overreactive response to something (called Th2). Responses to microbes are regarded often as Th1 and if you get a good Th1 response then it can stop an overactive Th2 response. During development the immune system develops tolerance to things that it sees very early on when the baby is still inside the womb so I don’t agree with the idea that you should not eat peanuts while pregnant to avoid your child being allergic to peanuts as they are more likely to be tolerant. The immune system is very complicated so it is not easy to explain why things don’t always go right. It is usually a number of different things.

    • Photo: Mark Travis

      Mark Travis answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      People have phobias for a number of reasons, oftem associated to a traumatic experience in childhood.

      Allergies are very different, and the immune system reacting to something that really isn’t harmful (e.g. pollen, some foods like peanuts). This allegic reaction can be very dangerous in some cases.

    • Photo: Michael Loughlin

      Michael Loughlin answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      phobias are fears allergies are the immune system over-reacting to things that would not actually harm them. Microbes can sometimes stop you getting allergies by helping the immune system work correctly wheras bacteriophobia is fear of bacteria

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