The medical world is not everyone's forte. This book is to help address aspects of anatomy and physiology and health care for writers. General and angsty authors welcome.
The immune response, a complex cascade of white blood cells (WBC), mostly histamines, is the body's defense against foreign matter that could be damaging. Allergies occur due to an over exaggerated immune response to something that the body has come into contact with.
The white blood cells sometimes flag items that aren't inherently damaging as 'danger' or irritants. Histamines cause the blood vessels to dilate to allow proteins and other WBC to the site to fight infection or repair the damaged tissue.
An allergy response might be triggered by inhaling, eating, or touching the specific allergen. Common examples include pollen, animal hair, dust mites, peanuts, medications, bee/wasp venom.
Minor reactions might include rashes, itchy eyes/nose, watery eyes, sneezing. Eating something that one is allergic or sensitive to can cause bloating, diarrhea/constipation, rashes, nausea.
Antihistamines like Zyrtec and Claritin target the histamines (WBC responsible for the allergy response) and tell them to calm down. Benadryl is also an antihistamine but it can cause drowsiness because it can cross the blood-brain barrier where histamines are also used in the body's wake/sleep cycle.
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Asthma
Asthma is also when the airways constrict. This is also an inflammatory response but it's usually triggered by breathing irritants in or stress/activity. Asthma can be life long or it's possible for children to grow out of it.
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Treatment varies depending on severity but often an individual will have a steroid inhaler for daily (maintenance) use to help keep the airway relaxed, and an albuterol (inhalable epinephrine) inhaler/nebulizer for sudden difficulty breathing relief (rescue). For individuals who have sports/exercise induced asthma they might only need a rescue inhaler to take before/during their activity.
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Anaphylaxis
Anaphylaxis is when the allergy response moves beyond mild symptoms to an ASAP emergency. Symptoms can start within seconds or minutes (not usually greater than 30 minutes though) of coming into contact with the allergen. A decrease in blood pressure/heart rate might occur, nausea, skin rash (which is really bad if red streaks appear moving closer to the heart), but the most known (and dangerous) is constriction of the airway leading to wheezing and possible complete inability to breathe.
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When the airway is closed attempting to intubate the person will do no good because there's no airway for the tube to go down. Epinephrine injections (Epi-pen) is the initial treatment of choice for anaphylaxis because it directly triggers the airway to open (drug class beta 2 agonist). Epinephrine is part of the fight or flight response so it opens the airway to allow the brain and muscles more oxygen in those high stress scenarios.
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If an Epi-pen is used it is strongly recommended for the individual to go to the ER because one dose of epinephrine might not be enough to hold the extreme allergy response at bay. Sometimes additional doses are needed, and steroids might also be prescribed since that drug class serves as immunosuppressants.
