Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: Gesundheit! How Allergies Work

Episode Date: May 14, 2017

In this week's SYSK Select episode, about 30-40 percent of humans suffer from some sort of allergy. The big joke, though, is that every sufferer is the victim of mistaken identity. Allergies are the result of a hypersensitive immune system mistaking a harmless protein for a foreign invader. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, everybody, this is Chuck, and welcome to this week's SYSK Select episode, all about allergies. And the reason I picked this one is because, although I think I'm on record in this episode even,

is saying allergies don't tend to affect me, they bit me this year, and I've had a rough time with the pollen, so it kind of got me thinking about allergies again, and I thought maybe you all could learn a little something to enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,

looking particularly smart today in his glasses. Chuck's the one with the beard, by the way. That's right. Kind of bibles of mine after making video content, having an entire season of a television show that people still say, wait, I thought it was the other one. Yeah, it's not like this is, you know, the radio days of the 1940s,

when you really didn't know what people looked like. They're like, Orson Welles is a baby face. Yeah, he used to beard it up back in the day. Yeah, I think of him as like the, in Citizen Kane early on, and he was clean-shaven baby face, right? Yes, I think so. So, what are you saying?

How's this like, Citizen Kane? It's not. Oh, okay. Good one. Thanks, man. How you doing? I'm good, a little under the weather. Are you?

But not because of allergies. You sure? Well, it's funny you said that, because Emily was like, you know, you may have some allergies, because- It's possible. Sometimes you think you're getting sick, and it could just be allergies.

It definitely could be. Yeah, well, she's super allergic. To all sorts of stuff? Yeah, just really bad allergies. That sucks. Not like food allergies. Well, yeah, seasonal. Pollen, dust bites.

Pollen, ragweed, all that stuff. Yeah, venom. Yeah, and I grew up, yeah. I grew up with allergies. I think I've mentioned this before. Like asthma and all kinds of stuff, and I just grew out of it. Because of that faith healer.

Yeah, I guess so. Right? I got bit by that rattlesnake, and everything was all good. Yeah, venom. It works both ways, right? Actually, it does, because there's anti-vendant, remember?

Anti-vendant, yeah. Didn't we do one on what's the most venomous or poisonous animal in the world? That was a good one. It was the country of Australia. It was, it was a dangerous place. Well, Chuck, I specifically remember one time when we were at work,

and you were attacked by a bee, and I had to deliver an epipen shot to your thigh. Remember, the whole gang was there. The whole gang. They carted you off in an ambulance. It was really kind of traumatic for us. It was scary. But I got my magnum PI plate that day,

so it kind of everything balanced out. Every all's well that ends well. But what's mind-boggling is that you don't even have an allergy to bees. What? So, like, what happened there? Well, it was just TV. It was a TV show.

Yeah. I'm having trouble distinguishing reality from fiction these days. Other people are too. Had you had a bee allergy, though, after reading this article, you would know what was going on. Yeah, and I think we even covered that

in the bee podcast, didn't we? We covered, like, anaphylactic shock a little bit. Yeah. But this is, like, what we're about to talk about is allergies, the cellular basis of what constitutes an allergy, how they're created, where they come from. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, I tried to stump Emily this morning because I thought I was being a smart guy, and even though she has bad allergies, I was like, I bet you don't even know what they really are. Oh, yeah? She's like, yeah, it's an overreaction from your immune system to a perceived invader. Nice.

Almost exactly like that, and I felt really stupid. I was like, oh, to a perceived invader? Where'd you go, Emily? She loved it. She was like, call me smart guy, and like, follow me around the house, brow-beating me.

Nice. Yeah. So she's absolutely right, though. I mean, an allergy is basically a case of mistaken identity as far as your immune system's concerned. Yeah. You know? You've got all sorts of foreign invaders

coming at you all the time. Sure. And we have an immune system to handle these things, but every once in a while, and it depends, they think probably that you are genetically unfulfilled if you have allergies. Oh, it's not a complete genetic code or something? Yeah.

Like you have a little bit of information missing. Your immune system has a little bit of information missing, and so, for example, in the article, they used the example of like a shrimp. You can eat shrimp. Sure. And there's maybe a protein attached to it that your body's like, did he eat this,

or where did this come from? Or are you being attacked by shrimp? Exactly. Yeah. I think probably that all allergies are triggered by proteins, but it's a case of mistaken identity. Yeah.

So let's talk about this. Let's get into the immune system a little bit, how the immune system handles foreign invaders, perceived or otherwise. That's right. Well, I guess we could start with something called a lymphocyte, and you've probably heard of things like T cells and B cells. Those are lymphocytes.

Yeah, T cells, that's how they determine whether you have HIV, I believe, like if your T cell count is low, because HIV is an immunodeficiency disorder. So they are both white blood cells, and they are really important to the immune system, but they make mistakes sometimes. Right.

And I love the way this, who wrote this, by the way? Steve Beach, Freelancer. Never heard of him. I thought he did a great job, though, because he likened the B and T cells to custom agents, customs agents, just like they go anywhere they want in your body, and they investigate cells, and basically are like, let me see your papers,

where are you going, and what's the purpose of your visit? It's like Arizona in your body, like they show up anywhere. Like you said, they can make it anywhere. They can pass through membranes and blood vessels, and just pop up, and they go, who are you? Lymph nodes. Yeah, very important for them to visit the lymph nodes. It is very important, because that's

where they go back and start producing antibodies, right? That's right. When they see something, and they discover a cell, and they say, hold on a minute, your papers are not in order. Then there's trouble, and they launch. Basically, they start the attack at that point. And we haven't quite figured this out. Basically, what happens when a B cell, especially,

encounters a foreign body, which is called an antigen, because they generate antibodies. They trigger the generation of antibodies in your body. So that's where antigen comes from. That's right. The B cell basically takes down all of its data, and then goes back up into the lymph nodes, and that B cell, that white blood cell,

turns into a plasma cell and starts churning out antibodies that are specifically tailored to counteract that antigen, that foreign invader that it encountered. That's right. And our bodies have five types of antibodies, and they're called immunoglobulins. I love that word. It's tough to get out, but it's a great word.

Yeah. We'll call them IgEs. And IgE is the one that's responsible for allergic reactions. Yeah. And the reason that that one's responsible for allergic reactions, as we understand them, is because IgEs, immunoglobulin E's, they attach to mast cells and basophils.

Yes. And those are two different types of cells. A mast cell is found in a connective tissue. A basophil is a type of white blood cell, but they share the common allele that both of them contain histamine. Yeah. And when they are hijacked by an IgE antibody,

they basically become little ticking time bombs. So think about this. When you come in contact with an antigen and your body goes off, that white blood cell goes off and starts producing antibodies, that first moment of contact creates what's called the sensitizing exposure, right? Yeah, and it's basically a mistake. It is.

In the case of allergies. Yeah, because there's nothing inherently dangerous about ragweed pollen, and your body can handle bee venom and shellfish. But there's some protein in each of those that certain people's bodies, if they don't have the genetic code for their white blood cells to say, oh, you pass.

You're fine. Then there's that case of mistaken identity, like you said. That's right. So once you have that sensitizing exposure, the first time your body comes across this protein and there's that mistaken identity, it starts producing antibodies. And those antibodies attach, in the case of IgEs,

to basophils and mast cells. And they start circulating throughout your body, just waiting for the next time it encounters that antigen that it's been specifically designed to interact with. That's right. And what happens then, they say, hey, I know you. You're not supposed to be here. I'm going to release something called histamine, which

is, can be a great thing in your body, because that's what's going to, you know, that's basically your arsenal fighting this invader. But it can be a bad thing, too, if too much of it is released, as we will see in a little while. Yeah, so when an antibody, an IgE, connects to an antigen, it's already connected to a mast cell or a basophil, remember.

Those things are loaded with histamine. So they're basically taking them along for the party. Right. So when it connects, it sends a signal to something called complement proteins, I believe. And those complement proteins come along and say, oh, cool. A chain reaction we can start to fulfill. And they start locking on and locking on and locking on.

And once a certain amount of them have kind of locked together along into this antibody, antigen, mast cell, basophil joint, the mast cell or the basophil goes kablooey. And all of a sudden, you have histamine floating through your body. That's right. It basically destroys those original cells such that the histamine is just released and unduly released.

And this is called the allergic cascade. This is what we think of. So you may have come in contact with shrimp. And then 10 days later, you ate shrimp. I know. I had an allergic reaction to shrimp. But you got over, right? Yeah.

OK. Yeah. Spoiler. All right. And it takes maybe seven to 10 days for that sensitizing exposure from that time to the next time you could have the allergic cascade, because that's how long it takes for your body

to produce the antibodies. But when that allergic cascade is kicked off and the histamine is released, that's when the symptoms that we associate with the type of allergy come about. Yeah. So if you inhale it, your mucus membranes are going to flare up.

Sure. You might get hives. Yeah. Hives, which are basically like histamines cause your blood vessels in the area to leak, which makes it swell. That's a hive. Sneezing, wheezing, all that.

I could wheeze right now if you let me, but it would be really gross. Let's hear it. I don't want to. People would say, oh, man, Chuck, get to a sanitarium. Yeah. But I'm sick. I don't have allergies.

A sanitarium? Yeah, remember that? Yeah, like the Kellogg's thing. Yeah, sure. Battle Creek. Nausea, diarrhea, a little vomiting maybe. Yeah. That's like, you know, I think that's

the scale from least reaction to most. If you're vomiting, then you've ingested something that you're really allergic to. Yeah. You can become swollen. Usually, like the part of your body or the type of reaction you have, right, like where if your skin swells, if your arm swells,

you probably didn't inhale or ingest that. It probably came in contact with your skin, like a break in your skin. Yeah, it depends on how you ingest it and how your body reacts to it. Because it's different for everyone in severity, obviously. But speaking of severity, it can get really bad, which we talked about in the B episode.

If this cascade of this allergic cascade is allowed to continue and you have enough of a reaction to it, you have enough antibodies attached to mast cells and basophils, then a ton of histamine is released, you can be in big trouble. You can go into what's called anaphylactic shock. Yeah, and proceeding that, you can have anaphylaxis, which is not quite as bad.

It's a bad reaction, but it's not the full-blown shock. If you're in full-blown shock mode, then you could die easily and within minutes even. If you have, let's say, like a peanut allergy, and you accidentally eat those peanuts unless you get that injection of epinephrine that's going to open those airways and restrict the blood vessels back to their normal levels, then you could be a goner really soon.

Right, and that's called a systemic reaction, where your whole system is involved in this. And if your histamine dilates to blood vessels, your blood pressure can drop. It also causes swelling. So if your airway is swollen, that tends to close it off, which means it's tough for you to breathe. Yeah, you could starve your brain and kidneys of oxygen,

and organ failure can happen. And I think, would they say, several hundred people die in the United States alone each year? Yeah, because we didn't cover this in the TV episode about bees where I delivered that epinephrine pen and saved your life, if you'll remember. I do remember. But apparently, the effects of the epipen last 10 to 20 minutes.

Yeah, I didn't realize it was that short. Yeah, so we should have had you outfitted with a whole belt of those things. I thought you were just good to go once you had the epipen shot. Apparently not. So I think it's just like, hey, let's stave off death until we can get you to a hospital. I think so too.

But you have to do it early enough so that it can have the effect of counteracting this allergic reaction. And if it's longer than 10 to 20 minutes to get to the hospital, you should probably have more than one pen. But even if you survive, your brain and your kidneys being starved of oxygen, you can suffer long-term damage from going into anaphylactic shock.

Yeah, I would be a freak if I had this possibility existing in my life. I would have an epipen in my car and in each room of my house. I would not take any chances. And what about a peanut allergy too? It's got to be so easy to come in contact with that. Yeah, well, we'd mentioned that time on the plane when they said you can't even open peanuts on this flight.

And we had people right in that were like, yeah, dude, that could seriously happen. Right, and I understand that. What's crazy to me is if you fly Delta, they'll give you peanuts all day long. Well, not if someone says that they're allergic. That's the point. Yeah, I guess so.

This was a Delta flight. And they said, I'm sorry, everyone, no peanuts today. Because what's a Delta? I thought it was Southwest. The Chinaman in 12E is allergic to peanuts. Yeah, everybody's like, oh, god, I want my peanuts. I hate you. I guess I'll just eat pretzels and biscuit cookies.

Yeah, and dirt. Dirt? OK. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one.

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So all right, let's say you have allergies. Or let's say you think you have allergies and you want to go in and find out for sure. There are a couple of ways that they can test this out. You smear yourself in honey and run into a beehive. No, you would do what's called a scratch test. And I've never had one of these. Emily's had one.

And she also does immunotherapy, which we'll get to. But they apply a diluted extract of different kinds of allergens to your back or your arm. And then they scratch you with a needle. And they see what happens. And if it becomes swollen and red, then they say, you know what? I think you're allergic to ragweed. Because we just put some on your body and scratch it.

They can also do blood tests and search for specific antigens. Yeah, that's better for kids, I think. Yeah, because it can cause a sensitizing event in a kid if you expose them to it. Because everybody knows their genes are just stupid. Yeah, they're very susceptible to influence, I guess. Which is weird to me.

So here's the thing. Does that mean that it's impossible to die from your first bee sting? That it what is possible or impossible. Because if there has to be a sensitizing event, how would you come in contact with bee venom other than to be stung? How would you become sensitized?

I was looking all over the internet for it. And I think one of the things I found while doing additional research for this episode is that we have a pretty good idea of how allergies work. But it's definitely not complete yet. Yeah, when you're on the cellular level, I'm sure there are still some mysteries to be had. Yeah.

So they say things like, because one of your questions was, how do they identify that's a foreign invader? And I was happy to just say they identify a foreign invader. Right, and how do they take down its information and then go back to the lymph node and start producing an antibody? I assume they had a pen and pad and they had a little golf cart.

They did a police sketch. Yeah, that's the way I see it. So you've got scratch therapy, blood tests. They both work, they're OK. And then if they say, you know what? You are allergic to something. X, Y, and Z. There's basically three things they recommend.

The first is to avoid that thing, whatever it is. Sure, and if that's shellfish or peanuts, then you're in pretty good shape, because that's pretty easy to avoid in most cases. You would think, have you ever had a shrimp allergy? Shrimp is pretty delicious. No, but it's easier to avoid than pollen, let's say. Because pollen's everywhere, especially here in the South.

So if you're allergic to pollen, there's no avoiding it. I mean, there's cars that all the cars in the spring in the South are yellow. Every car's painted yellow. The streets run yellow. Literally, yeah. So you would take medication, corticosteroid. You might walk around with an FNF

and pen depending on what you are allergic to. You know, that kind of thing. And then the third one is what you said Emily was doing. And what I've done before, too, which is immunotherapy. You've done this? I think so. I mean, I undertook the process of immunotherapy by myself. And it seems to have worked.

I was about to say, did a doctor give you injections? It's a point in your life. Tell me about Emily's experience. Well, she does the standard immunotherapy where she goes in to get her allergy shots once a month, I think. And they start you out on a low dose that's basically a weak dilution of these antigens.

And they inject it in her body and just build that up over time to increase her immune response, I guess. Right. And then over time, so this is what they think happens. Over time, either the body possibly gets its genetic information filled in enough so that it's like, oh, was my face red because this wasn't actually a foreign invader, it's just a shrimp protein.

And or they believe that another antibody, IgG, which acts as kind of like a blocking antibody that prevents an allergic reaction, starts to build up as a result of immunotherapy. We should say, I think immunotherapy is still fairly controversial. Is it? I believe so because it's introducing

a potentially dangerous thing into a human being. And it's not like if you ask somebody of honey as a good immunotherapy, logically, it should make sense. If you use local honey, very, very local honey, it's going to contain some of the same pollen that you're exposed to that you're allergic to in it. And so when you eat it, when you ingest it, it's like taking that low level.

And it should be doing the same thing as that taking injections from the doctor. Sure. It's more delicious. Yeah. And it takes a long time. Emily's been at it for, she was at it for a couple of years without virtually no success.

Right. So it takes a while. Has it been helping, though, at all? I think so because she still has bad allergies, but they used to be way worse. Yeah. But she's been on these shots now for like, I mean, she did it when she was a kid,

and then she's been on it again for like five years probably. Yeah. It's been a while. So I had one serious, it wasn't even serious, but it was a distinct allergic reaction. It was shrimp once. And I ate it, and you mean it's like, why are you red? And like, what are those red dots all over you?

What's going on? And I figured out I was having an allergic reaction to shrimp, which I'd never had before, right? And I loved shrimp. And I tried it the next day, tried a little bite of shrimp, kind of had a similar reaction. So I was like, something's going on here. Wow.

So I decided that I was going to get myself over my shrimp allergy. Have you ever had a $15 copay? Right, have you ever had shrimp chips? Yes, they're delicious. They are delicious. They're like little kind of potato chip french fries with their shrimp flavor, because they have shrimp dust

on them, like sexual powdered shrimp. Shrimp dust. So I started like very eating little amounts of shrimp chip, and then over time, I would eat more, and whole bags of them at a time, you know? And then finally, I got to the point where I could eat shrimp again. I don't know if that really cured me,

or if that was just a fluke. Yeah. Like maybe that shrimp was just a local type of shrimp in the Carolinas or something like that. All kinds of shrimp. But that's my immunotherapy story. Well, you can eat shrimp now, like gangbusters, so. Yeah, and I do.

That's good. Do you really? Yeah, whenever I can, yeah. I like shrimp. I'm trying to make up for lost time, because I spent like three years, two years, without eating shrimp. So beware, prawns and shrimp of the world.

Josh, you got your number. I will eat you live. Will you? No. Oh, OK. That's gross. No, it's not. People do that.

I guess that's it. Yeah, that is allergies. And I bet the reason I quizzed Emily is because I think a lot of people who have allergies don't even understand the core concepts. And hopefully now you do. That it's a case of mistaken identity. That's so awesome.

Yeah. And your DNA is dumb. Or incomplete. OK. If you like this, you should go check out how allergies work. You can type in in the search bar, howstuffworks.com. You can also look up another article I wrote about using honey for immunotherapy.

That's pretty interesting. Probably like honey allergies maybe would be too good for instance, putting the search bar for that one. And I said search bar twice, which means we're going to have two listener mails, huh? No, just one. Oh, well, first before we do that, how about a word from our sponsor?

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Time for Listener Mail. OK, I'm going to call this in the name of the fire. Guys, I just listened to your cast on stunt men, stunt women.

Just to say stunt people. And I was reminded of a story I thought you might like to hear. My dad is an actor. And way back in the 90s, he was in a film called In the Name of the Father. Remember that? Oh, yeah, with Daniel Day Lewis, right? Great movie. Is that his dad?

No. He said it stars Abraham Lincoln or Daniel Day Lewis. In the film, he played, and this is one of my favorite movies from that year, by the way. It was about the IRA, wasn't it? Yeah, it was about wrongfully imprisoned group of friends, basically, that they suspected as being bombers. I don't want to give away too much.

But there is a prison. In the film, he played a prison guard who gets set on fire by some pretty nasty inmates. So I guess there's a fire, too. In the guard. In the guard. What happens next served as a warning for any actor who decides they're up for performing their own stunts.

The director decided my dad could do some flailing and running with his arms on fire, and that a stunt professional would do the more intense full body fire shots. Like we said, in the stunt person podcast, like the fire thing, you're always running with your arms going. What would he do in your own fire? Can you stand there? Can someone put me out?

Some people do. Buddhist monks just sit there. Well, yeah, that's different. I'm ready. Wow, everyone. They wrapped up his arms, covered them in jelly, and set them ablaze. But what my dad had failed to realize

is that the stunt men do not wait for anyone to say action. As a result, he just stood there on fire, waiting for someone to say he could go, while it's getting hotter and hotter, with each passing second. Fortunately, the director eventually realized what was happening, and hastily yelled, go. But by this time, my dad was way too hot,

and just kind of side stepped into the shot, waving his arms like a half-baked ballerina. If you watch the scene carefully, you can actually see the shots. He was really on fire, and by the genuine fear and panic in his eyes. Hope you guys carry on making these for as long as humanly possible.

That is Freddie Turner from Oxford, England. Nice. And I guess Freddie Sr., well, he didn't say he's a junior, was on fire. And I think Jim Sheridan was the director of that movie, if I remember correctly. So Jim Sheridan was the one who said, go! That's a pretty great listener of mail.

Yeah, that's a good one. What was the dude's name, Freddie? Yep, Freddie. Thanks, Freddie. Freddie Turner in Oxford, England. Cool. Well, if you have a great story associated with something we've talked about, as always, we want to hear it.

You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com and check out our website, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.