Believe it or not, there is a film that’s about allergies and how to cure them. All it takes is surviving a plane crash.
Let me explain.
The film is “Fearless” directed by Oscar-winning director Peter Weir and is based upon the novel of the same name by Rafael Yglesias.
The film starred Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini and Rosie Perez. Bridges and Perez were one of three survivors of an airplane crash.
The Jeff Bridges character became fearless after surviving the crash and coincidently was cured of his severe strawberry allergy. Sadly by the end of the film his allergy returns with a vengeance and he goes into anaphylaxis when he learns that he will be receiving a huge settlement for the plane crash.
The author may have taken poetic license in order to make some dramatic points but the message ought to be clear that allergies are connected to emotions that lurk beneath the skin.
Allergies are the immune system’s reaction to a foreign substance like pollen, medication, an insect bite or pet dander by producing antibodies.
The body identifies the foreign allergen as harmful even though it’s benign and the reaction causes inflammation of skin, sinuses, air passages or the digestive system.
The eyes may itch, the lips may swell, the chest may tighten, the patient may wheeze and the worst case faces anaphylaxis which is a medical emergency.
There have been increases in allergies to food and various theories have been presented to explain all this. The most common treatments include antihistamines and anti-inflammatory medications.
All that’s old news. What may be new news to you is what psychoanalysts have been saying about allergies.
The connection between stress and allergic reactions is now clear.
As an example research by Kiecolt-Glaser and Glaser of Ohio State University Medical Center have demonstrated that when you induce stress in patients prior to exposure to allergens the wheals or welts produced were 75 percent larger.
This shows how important a person’s emotional state is when having an allergic reaction and also how important the role of medical reassurance is when treating the allergic patient.
I spoke to Dr. Yiqun Hui who is a successful allergy specialist and researcher with offices in Bayside and she told me that medical reassurance plays a major role in treating the allergy patient.
She said that the world today is filled with anxiety and that reassurance plays a key part in helping patients. She added that stress can induce many allergic conditions including hives, eczema and asthma.
There is a scene in the beginning of the film “The Sweet Hereafter” that perfectly demonstrates this issue.
The film starts out with a baby being bitten by a nest of spiders and proceeds to go into early stages of anaphylaxis. The father calls the ER and is told to rush the child over to the hospital but to make sure the child is kept calm or their breathing passage will close up.
If that happens the father was told he would have to perform a tracheotomy on his own. This was a truly disturbing film opening.
And if we address allergic reactions on a deeper level there is a vast literature called psychosomatics which suggests that when emotions are repressed and unresolved they have a nasty way of finding expression in the body.
Repressed emotions and unfelt loss regularly produce allergic reactions, headaches, back pain, spastic colon, chest pain, accident proneness and much more.
The founder of this research is Felix Deutsch. M.D. who wrote the text “On the mysterious leap from the mind to the body: A study of the theory of conversion” back in 1959.
This book is now considered a classic in psychosomatic writing and researchers like Dr. C. Philip Wilson, Dr. Cecil Mushatt, Dr. Ira Mintz and many others have carried on this work.
I rarely see a patient who is not suffering from some form of psychosomatic reaction on a regular basis.
This is why drug stores are doing a thriving business as patients hunt down over the counter cures for a variety of emotionally induced ailments.
What they really ought to be doing, in addition to purchasing medicine, is to find a way to hunt down their repressed emotions that are causing so much pain and anguish.
This, of course, is more difficult than you might think.
As an example of a dramatic psychosomatic reaction, I work with a tennis player who has been preparing for a major tournament and was filled with dread and fear as the day approached.
He went into the event with anxiety and trepidation and lost in an embarrassing fashion. He seemed to hold things together quite well for about two days and then suddenly had a severe allergic reaction where he sneezed violently and could not stop doing so.
This was followed by crying as he finally broke down and got in touch with the loss and the shame. Shortly after this his sneezing stopped and his allergic reaction mysteriously disappeared as quickly as it had come.
Many years ago I did research that looked at the precursors to injury and illnesses.
I interviewed over 400 patients and simply asked about their present state of health, any new illnesses or injuries and any recent loss or big changes in their life.
What I found was that the patients who had undergone loss but who had not expressed or mourned this loss all had sudden medical conditions and/or injuries.
There is little doubt that emotion and its repression play a significant role in the appearance of illnesses including a variety of allergic reactions.
One of my supervisor’s during my psychoanalytic training was Dr. Stephen Zaslow who was trained at Harvard Medical School and who told me that the asthmatic patients were saying “no” to the world around them and saw allergens as symbolic enemies.
Allergies and asthmatic conditions are far more mysterious then one might think.
They can be quite dangerous and one should find a good allergist to get proper diagnosis and proper treatment. And make sure you find one that also has a kind heart and a good ear so that you have a chance to deal with those underlying feelings that may be the source of it all.
