Stress and Anxiety, Worsen Allergies

Filed in archive Allergy: Research and Development on August 17, 2008

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, Image# 6036297

Stress and anxiety can make allergies worse and last longer. Such were the research findings presented Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association held in Boston.

According to Dr. janice Kiecolt-Glaser, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Ohio State University in Columbus:

"Allergies are not minor problems. A huge number of people suffer from allergies and, while hay fever, for example, is generally not life-threatening, allergy sufferers often also have asthma which can be deadly.

The wheals on a person who was moderately anxious because of the experiment were 75 percent larger after the experiment, compared to that same person's response on the day when they were not stressed.

But people who were highly anxious had wheals that were twice as big after they were stressed compared to their response when they were not stressed. Moreover, these same people were four times more likely to have a stronger reaction to the skin test one day later after the stress"

Well, so if you have allergies...be sure to relax more and get anxiety out of your system. Or at least lessen them. That will actually do us more good than harm, generally and not just allergy-wise.

Read more from Ohio State University.