Stop Stressing Out! You’re Making Your Allergies Worse

On top of a day filled with email, a fight with your spouse, and yet another parking ticket, now you have to deal with allergies too? While allergies may seem like just another problem to throw onto the pile, there may be a connection between your sniffles and your stress. A study from The Ohio State University found that stress triggers allergy symptoms in people who think they lead harried lives.

Is It All In Your Head?
In the study, the authors looked at a small sample of 179 people. About 39 percent of those people reported experiencing allergy symptoms, and they were also more likely to report higher levels of perceived stress than people who didn’t experience allergy symptoms at all.

Interestingly, being stressed out on a single day didn’t seem to impact the severity of symptoms, they found, but stress that built up over the course of a week did. “Long term stress is a creature of the mind,” says Danny Penman, PhD, author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World. “Think about the way we think when we’re stuck at a stressful day at work. We can’t get away from the calls, texts, and emails, so we think about it. We ruminate about it. Can I handle all of this work? What if I get sacked? How will I pay for my house? “ And the more you ruminate the more emotional stress you’ll feel.

That long-term stress takes its toll on your immune system, too, and allergies are, at their most basic, an overreaction of your immune system to foreign invaders of your body, whether that’s pollen or a protein in peanuts. The part of your brain that interprets situations as stressful, the amygdala, also regulates your immune system, says study author, William Malarkey, MD.

“The amygdala in the brain is the worry system,” explains Malarkey. “The amygdala deregulates the immune system in response to stress and its that deregulation in people with allergy susceptibly which results in symptoms.”

Malarkey notes that allergies aren’t caused by stress, but allergy symptoms are: “The stress interacts with your DNA and creates symptoms. So if you don’t have allergies tuned into your genes, you won’t show symptoms. The informative thing is that these same stress mechanisms apply to other diseases like diabetes and heart disease.”

The Mindful Cure
In the study, the people who perceived less stress, regardless of the number of stressors they encountered, had fewer allergy flare-ups and were considered to be resilient. Malarkey defines resilient people as those who bounce back quickly from adversity, stay positive in the face of adversity, and learn from adversity.

Both Malarkey and Penman suggest that mindful meditation is an effective way to become resilient. “All you have to do is sit up, close your eyes, and focus on the sensation of your breathing,” says Penman. “Each time your mind wanders back to the stress, just bring it back to your breathing.” By slowing or stopping the racing thoughts, you limit the amount of perceived stress, reducing the biological stress reaction that causes allergy flares.

The bottom line: Sitting quietly in mindful meditation may be far more effective at quelling your itchy eyes and stuffy nose during allergy season than reaching for pharmaceuticals. Are you a beginner at mediation? Try these meditation techniques for beginners.