I was reluctant to write this blog for a couple of reasons – it’s personal, it’s weird – but received enough requests that not doing so felt rude.
In spring of this year, the lovely
posted this.I was immediately fascinated, and determined to mount a similar defence against my own symptoms. I’ve had hayfever since I was nine or ten, and it has always been unequivocally rubbish. Eyes, nose, throat, the lot. As a teenager, I once rubbed my eyes so aggressively that I ended up with a scratch across my cornea. For me, it creeps up in late May and persists for a good month or so, peaking in mid-June. I have tried every antihistamine pill (by the handful) and nasal spray going.
All of this is to say that if someone had told me swallowing glass would have helped, I’d have considered it for a good few minutes. So the idea that I could simply think my way out of itchy, fervid delirium was obviously appealing. I decided to give it a shot.
The method
I’ll come on to the fact that this is ‘unscientific,’ ‘woo,’ and whatever else in a bit. For now, here’s what I did.
Decided that the method was plausible.
Decided that I would be able to think my way out of getting hayfever this year.
Whenever I felt allergies stirring, I forced myself to slow down and relax. I took deep, gentle breaths, and imagined pollen cells as tiny flecks of golden light, streaming through the air and my body like neutrinos or photons, interacting with nothing, allowing my mast cells to stay intact and retain their little packages of histamine. I focused on the beauty of nature around me, instead of its effect on my body, and imagined myself fading into the landscape.
And, of course, it worked. I have spent hours sitting in fields. I have been sleeping with my windows open. I have ditched antihistamines completely.
There are caveats – when I’m tired, I lose the ability to focus on relaxing, and symptoms flare up. When I talk or think about hayfever, I suddenly become conscious of my throat itching, and after a couple of minutes I’ll start sneezing. But I can focus again and they disappear. I am not yet completely cured. But it’s 70-80% better (I lean 80%) than it has been for the best part of two decades, so I am very happy.
Objections
So your hayfever was all in your head? You were never really allergic to pollen?
Lots of physical ailments avail of psychological treatment. This doesn’t mean they’re exclusively the product of the mind. I have no reason to think hayfever is any more psychological than, say, a nut allergy. If someone is cured of their travel sickness via hypnosis or a placebo, it doesn’t mean their travel sickness wasn’t ‘real’.This is just the placebo effect.
This isn’t really an objection. The placebo effect is a fascinating and brilliant phenomenon, and neatly illustrative of the power of mind over matter. This is not, however, a placebo in the way that they’re commonly understood: I have been optimistic and excited when trying new kinds of antihistamine, only for them to fail regardless. It seems like there is a reason that the pills did not improve my symptoms and this process did, even though you’d expect the placebo effect to apply to both of them.
Nonetheless, if ‘placebo effect’ is used in an unusually wide sense – to denote any psychological process that produces beneficial physical effects – I’m happy for it to apply to this too.There’s no science behind this.
Obviously, this is not a double-blind RCT. It’s anecdotal. Fortunately, that doesn’t affect whether or not it’s useful.
But there are some good reasons to think lab tests might support my own amateur, ‘unscientific’ findings:Drugs that work on serotonin often work on histamine. In fact, the first antidepressants developed were made from antihistamines.
Allergies and depression co-occur vastly more often than chance would predict
Antihistamines block the effect of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, which is involved in cognitive functions including arousal and motivation.
Asthma is commonly understood to have psychological factors, and is associated with high serum concentrations of serotonin. Tianeptine, an atypical antidepressant and anxiolytic, is also an effective asthma treatment. (Thanks to Lukas for this)
Anecdotal reports exist of LSD, a powerful psychotropic drug, curing allergies permanently. Some evidence suggests that derivatives of LSD have anti-serotonin properties, improving allergic reactions. Psychedelics can also alleviate chronic autoimmune conditions.
Histamine reactions (such as hayfever) are inflammatory. Inflammation, aside from being associated with pretty much every physical health condition going, is strongly associated with stress and various mental health conditions.
All of this is to say that the mind and the body are far less distinct than our modern Cartesian framework permits. We’ve known for (at least) hundreds of years that cognitive processes can moderate physical symptoms, so I have no problem allowing that allergies can admit of psychological cures.
I would be fascinated to hear more reports along these lines. Several people on Twitter have already noted that they’ve had success with similar methods. The trick, for my money, is allowing yourself to believe that it’s possible – and then being patient and kind enough with yourself to really slow down and relax.
Enjoy your summers!