Actually there is a problem here. Allergies are not a question of “no exposure or you are going to die”, except in extreme cases. A great many people have allergies so mild they aren’t even aware of them.
An excellent, yet odd case is celery. Celery is a very potent and odoriferous herb, that to most animals is about as strong as onion and garlic. But people, through some odd species quirk, can’t smell most of its odor.
Many people have a mild allergy to celery, getting just a mild throat irritation that quickly passes. However, it was discovered that some long distance runners, who after becoming very pumped up, would chomp down on a stick of celery and pass out with anaphylactic shock. The very simple solution was “don’t do that.”
But allergies can also change over time. If you have a mild allergy to some food, and eat a horse dose of it, or smaller amounts for a long time, it may increase your sensitivity to them. Conversely, if you have a more severe reaction to them, abstaining for a long time might reduce the allergic response somewhat.
A good example of this is severe “hay fever”, which is most likely due to a particular kind of tree pollen for a particular person. The very best treatment is to go somewhere without that pollen for a few weeks. But that is also mitigated because tree pollen cycles don’t usually last very long, so would be much diminished by the time you returned, anyway.
Importantly, allergies used to be defined by the allergen, but in truth they should be defined also by the individual response. Even though allergies are a reaction to particular organic proteins, people are able to have an allergic response to inorganic substances as well. So while technically they aren’t “allergic” to something, chlorine for example, their body still has an allergic response.
Thats very interesting. And it solves a minor mystery for me.
I have a very skinny lab(dog) that eats ravenously and seemingly indescriminately. She is skinny and no there are no parasites present. Been tested for worms, etc. And thenn treated for it anyway even though tests came back negative.
She LOVES veggies, raw or cooked. She eats paper, wood, and plastic too! Sometimes metal and rocks. I’ve caught her grazing in the yard like a sheep! Not grass, she hates that. She likes the weeds only, tail wagging the whole time. And no, she doesn’t throw up after. She ate all my tulip and iris bulbs too..lily bulbs as well. And the rhubarb. I saved the peony roots from her, but only barely. She won’t eat ferns or fern roots/bulbs.
But when I give her celery she won’t eat it. If I give her left over soup with celery in it, she leaves the celery chunks laying on the floor and licks the bowl squeaky clean. She will eat celery LEAVES though. If I’m chopping celery for soup and I throw the leaves down for her, she likes those.
She also doesn’t like onions or cabbage. But she LOVES spinach and lettuce. LEAVES, that is. The “stemmy” and “stalky” parts of it she won’t eat. Only the fragile leafy parts.