Allergies
Depending on your perspective, allergies are your body's rejection of nature, or nature's way of preparing nerds for the rejection of high school.
Just The Facts
- Allergies affect one in three people.
- Clemens von Pirquet discovered allergies in 1906.
- Prior to 1906 people with allergies were told to "man up."
- Usually, this came while they were choking to death on their own throat.
How Bad Can It Get?
Allergies range anywhere from "kind of annoying" to "instant death" depending on some kind of mysterious universal Russian Roulette. Allergies are more common in children than adults, and many people grow out of their allergies as they mature.
SUCK IT UP AND EAT THAT PEANUT AND BEE-STING SANDWICH
More than 11 million Americans are believed to have some type of food allergy. The most common are nuts and dairy. One of the biggest issues with food allergies is the fact that a restrictive diet can lead to malnutrition, especially in children. If you were unlucky enough to get the loaded barrel of the Destiny Revolver, your allergies could be so bad that even smelling a peanut could kill you. That's right: The gentle, noble peanut can kill with its mere presence. And before you start thinking we're exaggerating: Peanuts send 100 Americans to the grave every single year.
The Greatest Murderer in History
What Is Making Me Sneeze?
The most common way to diagnose allergies is through skin testing. One website claims that "this testing is not painful, and generally there is no bleeding involved since the needle only scratches the surface of the skin." Our friends over at Google Image Search put up a strong argument against that statement:
It's like acupuncture with dirty needles.
What Can I Do About It?
For the vast majority of allergy sufferers, treatment is as simple as swallowing a Claritin or staying indoors all summer and quietly resenting your friends and loved ones through the windowpanes. However, for others, changing their own lifestyle is not enough, so instead of just telling their kids not to lick the inside of someone else's lunchbox (a lesson we here at Cracked proudly ignore,) some parents have pressured schools into completely banning nut products: A large number of elementary schools are now proudly proclaiming themselves "Nut-free zones".
A term Jus...Nah, we're better than this.
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(The kid's got no balls.)
I thought this was funny until I realized you compared completely arbitrary things as if somehow they were equal. It's like saying that babies kill more people than sharks because of complications of birth/postpartum depression related suicide. Then again, it was just a joke.
ReplyMade me laugh, I developed allergies to dust, pollen and various kinds of molds later in life and now live in the mold capital of the US, so the universal revolver of destiny decided to take a double whammy.
Replyhaha. This really hit home, I'm deadly allergic to nuts and i found this quite funny.
ReplyReally like this one. Love the subtle Bieber joke at the end.
ReplyNPR told me that if you want to get rid of allergies, all you need is to contract pinworms. So, which do you want: allergies or bloody stool?
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI already have option 2 so bring it
Why did you need to tell us? Thats disgusting.
Welcome to the internet. You must be new here.
Ok allergy tests are not painful at all. Well, i guess if you have a bad reaction to one of them but it's just a series of scratches. Also The Clap is Gonorrhea, not chlamydia.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesGet real. The itching burns like fire. Imagine bawling as you're rolling around on the carpet, trying to lessen the pain and itch. Also, you're five years old. Let's not forget the following week's test, which was 30+ shots in one arm (the week after that was like 17 in the other arm). Yeah, painless.
Let me guess K-Star... you're a nursing student, aren't you? And you've told yourself that these tests can't possibly be painful because that would mean that you, the administrator, are a nightmare-inducing tool of Satan slicing into someone's back hundreds of times then pouring Something That *might* Kill Them (but will, at least, most definitely cause pain) into the wounds.
Sorry bud. You are.
Are you kidding, K-Star? Please tell me you're kidding.
I've had an allergy test. It honestly wasn't that bad; it hurt less than a shot, maybe (which I then had to get twice a week afterwards to build up an immunity to the allergy). And don't say that it didn't hurt because I had few harsh reactions. I found out that I was allergic to every spring pollen one could possibly be allergic to.
It just itched a bit. Which is better than having the mother of all colds for the entirety of spring.
Hlessi, that's because you had the *new* test, which is only a shot. Look at the picture in the article for an idea of what you missed out on by only a few years. Then thank your lucky stars for modern medicine, and gerroff my damn lawn.
and you may have to get allergy shots , so you dont itch lieke crazy puff up and have an asthma attack ( wait is that just me ?) which they burn like nothing else , and im almost positive im the youngest and second youngest getting those little devils
Hmm the chart seems a bit stupid to me, seeing as how it's only counting America. Flash floods may well kill more people than penicillin, but mainly in countries with, you know, more flash floods? It could be argued that, say, peanuts killing more Americans actually makes it better for humanity :)
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesCue morons shouting "But it's an American site!"
Cue moron not able to read the first sentence at the top of the page?
Does the entire world even track and publish allergy statistics? I honestly don't know, but I'd guess those numbers aren't readily available to the Cracked writing staff. However, the US makes that s**t readily available to anybody with an internet connection.
So that they can make you fear allergies more than dying from anything else.
Yes, ALL Americans should die and that makes the world a better place. I assume you're European. Enjoying not being a part of the USSR, are you? And of course, everyone is a moron for saying that we shouldn't wipe out entire countries. Choke on a dick.
You're....you're taking an obvious joke seriously. No one actually thinks kittens are worse for humanity or for Americans than chlamydia, so why does it matter whether the standard used to compare the two of them is everyone in the world or only people in America?
Actually that peanut butter and bee-sting sandwich sounds kind of awesome...I'm assuming by "bee-sting" the author meant the anglicised version of the delicious German dessert.
Replyi wish i knew pointless facts so i could post them here to try rebut what the author of the article just said
ReplyI get hives everyday and have everyday for the last 5 years. It's alot of fun.
Replynerds, dont fear, if it wasnt for you, the common peons such as so called jocks, preps, emos or whatever the hell they are called would still be picking grubs and worms for breakfast or/and they wouldnt have the modern amenities they enjoy so much like 4G phones, the Internet, Hygiene, Viagra...God put you in this world to take care of those common folk and idiots. you know teenagers always make fun of their `rents, yet live off of them. love ya Nerds.
ReplyHe has no friends.
Oh hi, lab tech here. We can test allergies (airborne and food) through bloodwork now. Next chart, please.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesYeah, but most doctors don't test for allergies by bloodwork, so you can shut your smug f*****g face.
Such angry people. Doctors are gradually switching over to blood testing, so calm down.
But not fast enough, and even with the fancy blood tests a friend of mine still has to get a painful shot once a month and he would still have a deadly reaction to tree-nuts meaning he can't enjoy 90% of the tasty junk food I can.
I remember allergy testing as hurting, though there was no blood.
ReplyAllergy skin tests aren't painful. Irritating maybe, but painful? It's a minor scratch with a needle dipped in an allergen.
Reply(Kid's got not balls) was f*****g Ace though.
The level of annoyance depends on how severe the allergy is, as said for some severe allergies even smelling them can have a really bad reaction so putting some in a scratch would be way worse. Of course it differs from person to person.
They also helped kill off people with lethal reactions you look at people now-a-days and wonder if modern medicine is sending us a biological middle finger with the crap we gotta deal with
ReplyDid this get edited? I read the same article yesterday, only slightly different. Picked up a few good jokes (notably the 'bee-sting sandwich') but lost a few as well (making fun of overly-concerned parents, etc.). o_o;
ReplyOh man up. I'm not allergic to anything. Allergies are fine if you just don't be a pussy.
Replyif you haven't had a test, then you dont know, and to be honest, yer just being a dumbshit.
I'm allergic to idiots who say "itch" when they mean "scratch."
ReplyI also suffer that affliction
Ditto
Allergy tests aren't that bad. Just slightly itchy. I had one a few years ago and they found out I was HIGHLY allergic to mold, which sucks. But the test is painless (does itching count as pain?)
ReplyOh man that allergy test looks aweful. Still got to do it though I'm breaking out and I don't know why. I have to ask have people really died from those trojan sex items? if so that's kinda funny although the dick cheney shooting someone joke is so old it's not really amusing to throw that in anymore.
ReplyYep, I had a friend who was sent to the Emergency Room because her boyfriend didn't realize she was allergic to latex.
He meant latex, people can be allergic to latex