Stress and anxiety can worsen allergies

Stress and allergies do not make good bedfellows. An American study carried out at the University of Columbus in Ohio has shown that being stressed and anxious can increase allergic reactions to hayfever by as much as 50%.
 
In order to investigate what consequences psychological stress has on allergies, the scientists recruited 28 volunteers who all suffer from seasonal allergies. They were all given skin prick tests to determine their reactions to various everyday allergens, and their blood and saliva were analysed during the course of the experiment.

 

The volunteers spent two half-days being put into medium- and high-stress situations that entailed reading a text in public or being videotaped and then watching their taped performance with others.
 
When the researchers examined changes to the wheals that had formed on the volunteers' skin as a result of an allergic reaction, they noticed that moderately-stressed volunteers had wheals that were 75% larger than the control wheals. At the end of the second day, highly-stressed volunteers saw these same reactions increase by 50%.

"Allergies are not minor problems", explained Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor of psychology at Columbus University where the experiment took place. Hayfever can, indeed, lead to other more severe problems, such as asthma.
 
In France, one in three people suffer from allergies, of which half are respiratory allergies.

 

 

 

http://www.lanutrition.fr/Stress-et-anxiété-aggravent-les-allergies-a-2786.html