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Key points
- Classical conditioning can enhance some allergic reactions.
- It is possible to undo classical conditioning with hypnosis.
- Patients who develop allergy symptoms at the mere thought of their allergens could likely benefit from hypnosis.
It is surprising to many people that allergies have a big-time psychological component. For example, take someone allergic to a certain flower, which causes him to develop asthma flare-ups. If he is shown a plastic version of the flower, he might still develop wheezing even though he has no exposure to the flower's pollen (Metzger, 1947).
The same kind of reaction can occur in patients known to be allergic to particular foods. For example, let’s say someone is allergic to peanuts. If she is given peanuts to eat, she will develop flushing and hives. However, some people who develop peanut allergy symptoms will not develop a reaction if they swallow a capsule without knowledge that it contains peanuts (Kelso, 2003).
Patients with hay fever symptoms of runny nose, nasal itching, and sneezing have reported improvement in their symptoms with the use of a placebo (a fake medication), even when they were told that they were receiving a placebo (Schaefer, 2018). Further, hypnosis has been shown to improve hay fever symptoms (Langewitz, 2005).
Finally, consider the case of a person who has learned that he is allergic to a particular poisonous plant because he has developed skin reactions when he has touched that plant. When this person is taught how to do hypnosis and is asked to touch the same plant after being told that it is non-poisonous, he will not develop an allergic skin reaction. On the other hand, if the person is told in hypnosis that he is touching the poisonous plant, even though he is touching a non-poisonous variety, he will develop a skin reaction (Ikemi & Nakagawa, 1962).
Mysterious Allergic Reactions
What accounts for these “mysterious” allergic phenomena? Classical conditioning. You may recall Pavlov’s experiments with dogs in 1905. In those experiments, Pavlov rang a bell and then fed dinner to his dogs. The dogs would salivate before they ate in preparation for digesting their food.
Pavlov then found that the dogs salivated as soon as the bell was rung, even before they were served their food because they had learned that the bell means dinnertime. Importantly, the dogs continued to salivate after the bell rang, even when dinner was not served. This reaction demonstrated the development of a “conditioned response.”
People in the examples above have all developed a conditioned response to their allergen (the substance that causes an allergy). The mere thought they were exposed to something that caused their allergies would cause them to develop symptoms.
I became involved in hypnosis when I encountered a 17-year-old with a severe milk allergy who developed asthma symptoms just by imagining that he was eating a cheeseburger, which is something he could not do in real life.
At that time, I asked myself, “If people can think their way into disease, can they think their way out?” The answer is yes. Further, I learned that hypnosis is a good tool to help people regulate their emotional responses (Anbar, 2021).
The situation becomes complicated when an allergic reaction is made a lot worse with conditioning. For example, someone might be slightly allergic to a dog, but because of classical conditioning, her allergic reaction might be large and may prevent her from being around dogs at all.
Hypnosis for Classical Conditioning
The good news is that with one to two hypnosis sessions, the classically conditioned response can be resolved. In such a situation, a person who is thought to have a significant allergy can “recover” partially or almost completely after learning how to change their reactions to an allergen through hypnosis.
Hypnosis to help someone who might suffer from classically conditioned allergies can be employed by having the patient imagine going back to when their body learned to react to the allergen. The memory of this event can be “rewritten” in hypnosis so that the patient remains calm when the reaction first occurs, and this ensures that the conditioned response never takes root.
Guidance of a healthcare professional is important for this kind of work so that the “rewrite” does not affect an essential memory, such as that which encourages continuing to be mindful and careful about exposure to potentially harmful allergens.
Takeaway
Under the guidance of a healthcare professional, hypnosis can help improve the allergy symptoms of patients who have developed classical conditioning. Patients who develop allergy symptoms at the mere thought of their allergens likely will benefit from hypnosis.
Copyright Ran D. Anbar
References
Anbar, Ran D. 2021. “Changing Children’s Lives with Hypnosis: A Journey to the Center.” Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Ikemi, Yujiro, Shunji Nakagawa. 1962. “A Psychosomatic Study of Contagious Dermatitis.” Kyushu Journal of Medical Science. 13: 335-352.
Kelso, John M., Cathie Connaughton, Ricki M. Helm, Wesley Burks. 2003. “Psychosomatic Peanut Allergy.” Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 111: 650-651.
Metzger, Frank C. 1947. “Emotions in the Allergic Individual.” American Journal of Psychiatry. 103: 697-699.
Langewitz, Wolf, Jan Izakovic, Jane Wyler, Christian Schindler, Alexander Kiss, Andreas J. Bircherb. 2005. “Effect of Self-Hypnosis on Hay Fever Symptoms – A Randomised Controlled Intervention Study.” Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. 74: 165–172.
Schaefer, Michael, Tamay Sahin, Benjamin Berstecher. 2018. “Why do open-label placebos work? A randomized controlled trial of an open-label placebo induction with and without extended information about the placebo effect in allergic rhinitis.” PLoS One. 13: e0192758.
