How does Arthritis develop and can food allergies affect it?
Food allergies occur when your immune system makes a mistake. Normally, your immune (say: ih-myoon) system protects you from germs and disease. It does this by making antibodies that help you fight off bacteria, viruses, and other tiny organisms that can make you sick. But if you have a food allergy, your immune system mistakenly treats something in a certain food as if it’s really dangerous to you. The same sort of thing happens with any allergy, whether it’s a medicine (like penicillin), pollen in the air (from flowers and trees), or a food, like peanuts. So the thing itself isn’t harmful, but the way your body reacts to it is. If a kid with peanut allergy would have eaten that peanut-topped brownie, here’s what would happen. Antibodies to something in the food would cause mast cells (a type of immune system cell in the body) to release chemicals into the bloodstream. One of these chemicals is histamine (say: his-tuh-meen). Doctors and health specialists are not exactly sure why some
