Laura Neri
DEPS, USiena
Emanuele Giordano
Department of Life Sciences (DSV),University of Siena
Abstract
The worrying increase of allergies in western lifestyle countries has not been explained to date, despite the great interest of the scientific community, a considerable part of which has unsuccessful sought the cause in their lifestyle and socio-economic conditions. In this article we show that there is sufficient evidence to say that the methodology used so far to investigate the link between allergies and living conditions is not adequate, because it does not allow to assess the multivariate and fuzzy nature of the phenomenon and leads to contradictory results. Moreover, for the first time we enunciate a theory able to link psychophysical stress to the onset of allergies, reporting empirical evidence in its support based on data provided by the italian Istituto Superiore di Sanità and providing the missing element in the construct already attempted by other authors that binds stress and allergies. The methodological solution that we propose and motivate with solid theoretical foundations is based on the fuzzy set theory, which allows to evaluate the impact of multifactorial phenomena with modalities similar to human perception schemes
Keywords
Allergy, fuzzy approach, socio-economic condition, stress, neuro-immune system, Weber-Fechner law
