• Question: what creates diseases ,viruses and allergies

    Asked by anon-350289 on 14 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Hannah Tanner

      Hannah Tanner answered on 14 Mar 2023:

      A disease is something that is causing some kind of problem in your body (other than injury). So diseases can be caused by various different things.
      Infectious diseases are caused by pathogens – these can be bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites that can live in or on our bodies. Some pathogens always make us ill when we catch them. Some pathogens only make us ill under certain circumstances.
      Non-infectious diseases are not catching. They can be caused by things that damage or poison our bodies like asbestos or radiation. Or sometimes our own bodies just go wrong, often because of a faulty gene.
      Allergies happen are when our immune system gets a bit confused. Our immune systems are supposed to attack things like viruses but sometimes they mistake things like pollen for pathogens. That’s one of the reasons the symptoms of having a cold and having hay fever can be quite similar.

    • Photo: John Clark-Corrigall

      John Clark-Corrigall answered on 14 Mar 2023:

      Diseases can have a number of causes from an infection caused by something external like a bacteria or virus, or from the body changing how it carries out processes.
      Viruses are made from DNA or RNA the same building blocks that make us and can’t reproduce on their own so need a host like us or another living being to survive.
      Allergies are where our immune system recognises something as harmful that isn’t that dangerous normally. So whether that’s hayfever or peanuts it reacts to case sneeze or have hives or swell up in response to stop the dangerous thing hurting the body but by doing this it does in fact hurts the body.

    • Photo: Rachel Colquhoun

      Rachel Colquhoun answered on 15 Mar 2023:

      Viruses are things that can cause infections. They are “created” by replicating themselves inside our bodies.
      Diseases are the illnesses and health conditions we can get. They can be caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi or even by our own bodies immune systems attacking us.
      Allergies are created when someone’s immune system starts to think that things like tiny particles from tree pollen or cat hair or a particular type of food is actually going to make us ill. It acts like they are a bacteria or virus and ramps up the immune system to fight it – an overreaction!

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