ACHOO! Ugh… Id’s bollen tibe again! Why oh why must the trees spread bollen all ober the blace? Dere had bedder be a dab good reason we’ve evolved to be allergic to the yellow stuff. After all, sniff the trees have been here longer than we have!
Dobers?
“Lisa! In this house we OBEY the laws of Thermodynamics!” - Homer Simpson
I am perpetually amused that folks think there is always some good reason for natural mysteries. Eyebrows, nipples on men, earlobes, allergies…we’re mere mortals, and any answer we give you will be nothing more than a plausible-sounding guess. If your creator ever gets around to entertaining such questions, maybe we’ll get some real answers.
AskNott
"Measure twice, cut once. Dang! Measure again, cut again.
My understanding of allergies is that the immune system goes into hyper-drive and mistakes dust, pollen, dander, certain foods, etc., as invading bodies. This is simplistic, to be sure, but I think it’s on the right track.
Anyway, considering “survival of the fittest,” maybe there’s no good use for allergies, but except in extreme cases where people go into anaphylactic shock and die, there’s no reason why they can’t breed and pass on their allergy-ridden genes. Unless you think red eyes and drippy noses should be enough to keep them from attracting a potential mate.
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
Sorry to have disappointed you with my question. Moderators who agree are welcome to send this to MPSIMS or The Pit or somewhere.
In the meantime, I’ll gladly take guesses in the absence of actual answers.
“Lisa! In this house we OBEY the laws of Thermodynamics!” - Homer Simpson
As it happens, I too suffer from allergies. Not just in pollen season, either. I have year-round allergies from mold, dust, pollen, cigarette smoke, perfume and God knows what else. I do have a possible solution for you, drewbert, but you ain’t gonna like it!
I once read an article in Discover magazine about an island in the Pacific whose inhabitants were plagued by intestinal parasites, but no one appeared to suffer from allergies. Once modern medicine stepped in and got rid of the parasites, suddenly these people started developing allergies. The thrust of the article was that these people’s immune systems were apparently “kept busy” fighting the parasites, and so had no time to react to airborne particles like pollen. Once the parasites were gone, the immune systems said, “Hey, this is boring! Now what are we gonna do?? Whoa, what’s that stuff coming in through the nose? ATTACK!” Okay, not exactly scientific phrasing there, but you get the idea. 
Using this line of reasoning, the article speculates that maybe we’re TOO healthy nowadays. Maybe, with fewer germs and parasites to fight, our immune systems have a tendency to overreact to foreign bodies, producing allergic symptoms. The only bad part is, do we really WANT intestinal parasites, when we could just take an Allegra? I read another article that mentioned testing this parasite theory on people with inflammatory bowel disease, where the body attacks itself for no apparent reason. Each test subject was given a drink laced with “harmless” whipworm eggs. Some of the subjects showed a definite improvement after the whipworms inhabited their intestines, so, who knows? I can hardly wait for the TV movie on the newest malady of the modern age, bored immune systems!