Stress can make allergies worse

Allergies act up when people are anxious and under stress, and those allergic reactions are worse the second day, according to a new study reported Thursday by an Ohio State University researcher known for her work on stress and health. In a presentation to the American Psychological Association, Janice Kiecolt-Glaser explained how stress affects the immune system and places people at risk for a host of diseases.

In an experiment conducted by Kiecolt-Glaser and colleagues, 28 men and women with a history of hay fever and seasonal allergies but not asthma were given a battery of skin tests and put through a number of stressful activities, such as giving a videotaped speech before a panel of experts and solving math problems without pen or paper. Basically, she said, "we bring people into the laboratory and stress them."The result: "Folks who are more anxious had bigger (allergic) responses during stress," she said. "Even the day after stress, for more anxious persons, you see persistence of allergic symptoms." And allergy medications, such as antihistamines, have little or no effect on the late-phase responses, she said.

In other stress research to be presented to the APA, Herbert Benson, a physician and director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, on Friday will explain how repetitious exercises that clear the mind of everyday thoughts, such as yoga and prayer, evoke what he terms the "relaxation response" and reduce psychological distress. His new work compared 19 adults who regularly engaged in activities that evoked the relaxation response to 19 who did not and found, through blood tests, differences in their white cell activity, which affects stress levels.In a second part of the investigation, 20 people who hadn't tried the practice were assigned to do it for eight weeks. They developed the same changes as those who evoked the relaxation response regularly."This is firm proof that the mind can affect the body in a therapeutic way," Benson says. "By doing repetition and disregarding other thoughts, it brings about changes in the body."

Courtesy of USA Today

Bonnie - I wholeheartedly agree with this research. While the studies are small in stature, they reaffirm what I have believed for years. This is why finding a stress-relieving mechanism is an essential tool for anyone's wellness plan.