SC - Allergy Discussion

[Jessica Tiffin]

Marged wrote:
>Well, I'll step up to the plate (ahem) and admit that I do indeed have
>"psychsomatic allergies". The mere stench of anise/licorice gives me a
>headache. It has done that since childhood. Now, do I get a headache
>because I am allergic to anise or because I dislike it so intensely that
>I experience a negative reaction? It's the second, pure and simple, no
>doubt about it.

Somethingorother I once read referred to the difference between food
allergies and food aversions - an aversion is a strong enough dislike that
it does actually cause uncontrollable/reflex metabolic responses, but it's
not the same immune mechanism that causes an allergy.  I have an aversion to
coconut - more than half a teaspoon causes me to throw up, but it's
basically an extreme and strenuous dislike and is in no way
life-threatening.  I suspect that quite a lot of people who claim allergies
should really be claiming aversions - and it is a strong enough
physiological reaction that it's not just people refusing to eat what they
don't like.  (There are several foods I dislike as strongly as I dislike
coconut - liquorice springs to mind - but I don't throw up when
inadvertantly eating the stuff.)  I wish I could find the article, I can't
remember the precise bodily mechanisms that cause an aversion, but it's
slightly more than psycho-somatic, I think.

Melisant


**********
Jessica Tiffin
melesine at ilink.nis.za  *  jessica at beattie.uct.ac.za
***********
Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease.  It made
you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.
(Terry Pratchett, Hogfather).

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