What is Hay Fever?
Hay fever is caused normally in a pollen season. Hay fever is an airborne allergy, mostly caused because of pollens and mould spores. The other name for hay fever is seasonal allergic rhinitis and pollenosis.
From studies it is found that around 20% of the UK population suffers from Hay fever. It is believed that Hay fever runs in families. People can be affected with Hay fever at any age. It is observed that a person having hay fever has 10% chance of also developing asthma. Children having hay fever normally have the same allergen for both the conditions. The symptoms of hay fever are found very extreme, either it would be very mild that the sufferer may not even notice that he is affected with hay fever, he may not even sneeze to pollens, or the symptoms would be so severe that the patient or the sufferer have to go through misery during the pollen season.
The pollen grains are airborne, so if those pollen grains somehow gets in contact with your body like while breathing, it gets trapped by the sticky mucus. The lysozyme a kind of enzyme present on the body’s tissue, these tissues digest the substance present on the layer of the skin. These enzyme releases the protein which causes the allergic reaction. So, hay fever can also cause an allergic reaction.
This reaction may cause the nose to watery secretion and there is a possibility that this watery secretion may enter the food pipe or throat from back of the nose, this is known as the “post nasal drip”, and the other name for it is catarrh. If action not taken at the early stage then the mucous membrane in the nose and throat may swell to such an extent that the eustacian tubes may get blocked. Eustacian tubes are the equalizers of the ear drums. Blocking of eustacian tubes results into temporary deafness.
During the reaction along with histamine other chemicals are also released like proteases, leukotrienes & prostaglandis. Proteases is kind of an enzymes that split the proteins cells present in the body and damages the small blood vessels. Prostaglandins stimulates the nerve endings and Leukotrienes triggers the airway to narrow the path.
