20 Things You Didn't Know About... Allergies

Curing them by giving yourself hookworms, preventing them by putting RFID tags in your food, and avoiding them in Knoxville, the Allergy Capital of the country.

By Rebecca Coffey
May 18, 2012 5:00 AMNov 12, 2019 5:21 AM
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1 Our immune system may be like those small bands of Japanese “holdout” soldiers after World War II. Not knowing that the war was over, they hid for years, launching guerrilla attacks on peaceful villages.

2 With our living environment well scrubbed of germs, our body’s immune “soldiers” mistakenly fire on innocent peanuts and cat dander.

3 According to the National Institutes of Health, more than half of all Americans have one or more allergies.

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