Learn to Love Your Runny Nose

Mere words cannot capture the importance of a clean nose to me. No matter where I go, I am always equipped with some kind of tissue paper to blow my nose with. To me, a runny nose is like a runny faucet, I must fix it as fast as possible and I cannot relax until I do. So, naturally, I don't relax at all when it's pollen season. Even though I arm myself with Kleenex and Claritin, I still find myself at the mercy of my relentless runny nose.

As our society has evolved, we have emphasized more and more the importance of cleanliness, which has caused us to hate our mucus, treating it as an imperfection that needs to be removed. Allergies, whether from pollen or from a certain type of food, are seen as improper reactions of our immune system that are not necessary. Researchers, however, have begun to look at allergies in a different light altogether, and I don't mean literally, because that is disgusting.

Ruslan Medzhitov, an immunobiologist at Yale, believes that allergic reactions are the body's way of informing you that you are somewhere, or doing something, that is hazardous to your health. In his research, for example, Medzhitov found that the cells involved in allergic responses can degrade and detoxity snake venom. He has also found that when people have allergic reactions to ticks, the reaction prevents the tick from actually attaching itself. These defense mechanisms are distinct from the other responses the body uses to defend itself from internal attackers.

So why do some people have allergic reactions and other do not? Medzhitov would reason that people who have allergic reactions have them because they lack in other defense mechanisms.