Allergies and Hypnosis

[CycoMelody]

Ok yall, I am typically one to answer question but right now I have one. I like to believe anything can be done with hypnosis but is there any cases where Hypnosis was used to cure allergies? Sadly I am allergic to hay dust, bees, and Latex. The Latex is the worst part. I want to wear some nice sexy stuff but I break out when I wear latex :s Any help would be useful.

[whatthe75]

Yes it is very possible.I rid my mother of hayfever using hypnosis,she had it bad too,her face would fully puff up and her eyes would close.She no longer suffers.

[Erskip]

Hayfever you could probably reduce the severity of, primarily because if they don't believe they are affected then they will not rub their eyes, sniffle or do anything which can potentially aggravate you sinuses, also there is potential to just make the whole experience less overwhealming and debilitating.

Can you actually cure allegies? No.

While you may be able to get some seemingly complex physiological responses (such as convincing someone to be more feminine, they might reduce sports, physical activity or even particularly strenuous use of the muscles, testerone usage lowers, production also lowers) the allegen response is down to essentially uncontrollable white blood cells which view innocuous substances as viral and try to attack them.

I suppose technically you could with a latex allergy introduce it to your skin incrementally in the hope of hardening you endurance and response to it, in the same way that certain workers will over the years develop tougher or more resistant skin if they deal with fire or harsh rough materials. However anything which inhibits swelling, or any difficulty breathing should just be avoided. And when it comes to latex I would just suggest trying leather, pvc or rubbery as a feasible alternative.

[whatthe75]

Can you actually cure allegies? No.

BULLSHIT! Maybe you didnt read my comment.It wasnt just a few sniffles like most hayfever.Her whole face would puff up ( just like a bad allergy reaction ) her eyes would close and she would be bed ridden for weeks with no energy,burning throat,the only way she could manage it before is with medication,but it still didnt make it go away it just made it comfortable enough to get on with daily life...Just.
I had a few sessions with her.I got her mind to identify the substance in which she created the reaction too.I then got her immune system to realise that the grass pollen was not a harmful substance and that the immune system was to treat it as any normal substance,and not attack it ( which is what causes the reaction ).She can now go out into the garden during the high pollen times and not have one single effect,and without the use of medication.

Another friend of mine i worked with a few months ago had a phobia of bees.I did an NLP session with him and freed him from his phobia,which he told me afterwards he got from a time when he was stung and he had to goto hospital with a bad allergic reaction to the sting.This i didnt know until after i had got him to go outside and let the bees in the garden fly around him.I decided as a precation to go through the NLP allergy cure as a "just in case". ( i had no need for hypnosis because we knew the exact thing he was allergic too - in mothers case we had to use hypnosis to find it first.)

A week later he was proving to his skeptical mother how i had cured him of his phobia.He went outside and to prove to his mother he went to touch one of the bees and he got stung ( he's about as bright as an eclipse i know ).His mother instantly got him into the car to take him to hospital because of his allergy.Nothing happened.No more allergy.

Do you think both of them are instances where it was just what they believed?

[hypnointerest]

Do you think both of them are instances where it was just what they believed?

Yes.

[whatthe75]

I'd like you to explain that one, with the evidence i just gave you.

[baby_jessica75]

if someone rids themselves of all the symptoms and reactions of an allergy then is this not curing the allergy? since the syptoms are the only way to tell if the allergy exist. this is the standard that doctors use to determine weather someone has an allergy is thier reactions "syptoms"
to the allergine then when the reactions no longer exist then the alergy no longer exist. this is another one of those subjects that seems to be comming down to the old "all you will get is a placebo effect" attitude well who cares why it is working to rid the poeple of the undisirable effects all that matters is that it works! in both instances described by whatthe75 the poeple no longer had allergic reactions to the allergine if this is not a good way to determine weather the person is allergic or not then all the docors I have ever seen are doing it wrong. the funny part is if a wonder drug came out that got the same results everyone would hail it a maraculous cure. I have always found it interesting that whenever something is found that works better than medical science the "science minded people" find more stringent guidlines to judge these things by then is ever used in medical science to test the worthiness of a "valid medical treatment" for the same condition!

[Erskip]

I'd like you to explain that one, with the evidence i just gave you.

Well I can sense I'm already Captain 'Oooh science never accepts evidence' anyway, so I'll continue. Evidence is the broadest sense is something verifiable and accessable that demonstrates a hypothesis. The information is third hand, I have to assume that it's true, and I know so little about the situation that there's barely anyway to prove or dispprove a hypothesis. For all I or you know the stinger didn't become inbedded in the person, or it might have not even been a bee; given that honey and worker bees rarely sting except in defense of a hive due to death, one of the bees may have just flown into him and jabbed him, or equally it could have been a stray wasp although that is increasingly unlikely.

And that's not going into the sheer physiology of allergy. If he had a severe anaphylactic allergy to bee stings then you are going to have a phobia of them for good reason because they can potentially get you killed, however if he had an allergic reaction which amounted to severe inflammation and it happened when he was still quite young then realistically he will just grow out of the allergy anyway.

My niece for instance was allergic to milk a year ago and used to break out in a rash every time it was in any food product, now she has little or no reaction to it. That was neither thanks to medicine nor hypnosis, it was just the body acting of its own, as the TH2 immune response does.


As for the whole science versus the power of the mind thing, hypnotism was born out of the observations and study of waking and meditation phenomena by Psychologists, which is ultimately the scientific analysis of human behaviour and mental functions. To suggest that hypnotism can have effects that science can't explain requires you to assume that hypnotism isn't a studied and analysed part of science anyway; if the phenomenon is written about, replicated and studied in a scientific fashion and shown to be true then it will be accepted (much like the scientists in sweden who tried hypnosis to relieve hayfever), if this was not the case then none of us would have an understanding of the hypnotic state to learn to begin with.

[baby_jessica75]

I'd like you to explain that one, with the evidence i just gave you.

Well I can sense I'm already Captain 'Oooh science never accepts evidence' anyway, so I'll continue. Evidence is the broadest sense is something verifiable and accessable that demonstrates a hypothesis. The information is third hand, I have to assume that it's true, and I know so little about the situation that there's barely anyway to prove or dispprove a hypothesis. For all I or you know the stinger didn't become inbedded in the person, or it might have not even been a bee; given that honey and worker bees rarely sting except in defense of a hive due to death, one of the bees may have just flown into him and jabbed him, or equally it could have been a stray wasp although that is increasingly unlikely.

And that's not going into the sheer physiology of allergy. If he had a severe anaphylactic allergy to bee stings then you are going to have a phobia of them for good reason because they can potentially get you killed, however if he had an allergic reaction which amounted to severe inflammation and it happened when he was still quite young then realistically he will just grow out of the allergy anyway.

My niece for instance was allergic to milk a year ago and used to break out in a rash every time it was in any food product, now she has little or no reaction to it. That was neither thanks to medicine nor hypnosis, it was just the body acting of its own, as the TH2 immune response does.


As for the whole science versus the power of the mind thing, hypnotism was born out of the observations and study of waking and meditation phenomena by Psychologists, which is ultimately the scientific analysis of human behaviour and mental functions. To suggest that hypnotism can have effects that science can't explain requires you to assume that hypnotism isn't a studied and analysed part of science anyway; if the phenomenon is written about, replicated and studied in a scientific fashion and shown to be true then it will be accepted (much like the scientists in sweden who tried hypnosis to relieve hayfever), if this was not the case then none of us would have an understanding of the hypnotic state to learn to begin with.

first off trance and hypnotic states were used regularly long before modern science came along! at one time they were common pratic for the treatment of ailments and pain so it is not really do to scientific study that people know about it! next the main problem I have with science is not science itself it is that anything studied that is outside of accepted popular science is dismissed outright (such as many studies in the area of Parapsychology). anything the popular scientific couminity feels is not possible is rejected outright and "flaws in the scientific method" used to reach these results are found (or made up) to keep everyone in thier safe little bubble thinking that there is nothing that hasn't been explained. we are a culture that has no new origanal ideas we go from theories from decades past and accept them as fact ( regardless as to weather they have been proven or not) and build new theories based on old unproven theories. reality is only what is agreed upon if my reality is that I can change my body through hypnosis and the power of my mind even if i do have phsyical evidence that my body has changed it would be said that there are many different things that could contribute to the change and the fact I was useing hypnosis for this purpose is just coincidence. anything outside of existing belief is dismissed and ridaculed out of hand just because they believe it cannot happen! just as with all your different explainations about the bee sting even if you had witnessed it first hand you would explain it away to fit with your preestablished beliefs of what is or is not possible. and since science still has not come to the point of fully understanding the human mind how can it say what the mind can or can not do? wouldn't a more accurate statment be it may be possible but I have never seen it happen? just a little food for thought how can we determine the limits of something we do not fully understand?

[Erskip]

first off trance and hypnotic states were used regularly long before modern science came along! at one time they were common pratic for the treatment of ailments and pain so it is not really do to scientific study that people know about it! next the main problem I have with science is not science itself it is that anything studied that is outside of accepted popular science is dismissed outright (such as many studies in the area of Parapsychology). anything the popular scientific couminity feels is not possible is rejected outright and "flaws in the scientific method" used to reach these results are found (or made up) to keep everyone in thier safe little bubble thinking that there is nothing that hasn't been explained. we are a culture that has no new origanal ideas we go from theories from decades past and accept them as fact ( regardless as to weather they have been proven or not) and build new theories based on old unproven theories. reality is only what is agreed upon if my reality is that I can change my body through hypnosis and the power of my mind even if i do have phsyical evidence that my body has changed it would be said that there are many different things that could contribute to the change and the fact I was useing hypnosis for this purpose is just coincidence. anything outside of existing belief is dismissed and ridaculed out of hand just because they believe it cannot happen! just as with all your different explainations about the bee sting even if you had witnessed it first hand you would explain it away to fit with your preestablished beliefs of what is or is not possible. and since science still has not come to the point of fully understanding the human mind how can it say what the mind can or can not do? wouldn't a more accurate statment be it may be possible but I have never seen it happen? just a little food for thought how can we determine the limits of something we do not fully understand?

Burden of proof. To say it's narrow minded of someone not to believe something is possible just because it hasn't or cannot be directly or indirectly proved is frankly like saying 'Just because' to win an argument. I could equally go up to a christian and visciously insist that Jesus was a homosexual and that there's no way he can prove definitively otherwise.

Seeing something is not the same as something being true or even proven, generally things are not accepted as science not because scientists refuse to leave their norms (which for a field which has consistantly existed through history primarily to consciously test accepted or believed truths is frankly ridiculous) but because the evidence is either non existant or just frankly irrelevent, and in almost all cases there is no hypothesis, cause or reasoning. Something being 'unexplained' is not an excuse to not have an explaination of how or why it happens.


The fact meditational states and 4.5 beat per second drum tones were used in aborginal and other cultures does not detract from the fact that hypnosis itself was not built upon the labourious and studied observation of these mental phenomena. Chewing willow bark used to be a method to alleviate fever and pain, that does not mean it was some rustic and mysterious natural remedy that transcends modern science, it was the salicylic acid in the bark which was studied and experimented and compounded with to eventually create aspirin.


In not wanting to start a complete derogatory argument, I'll leave with this nice succint video and say that it's rather amusing to hear someone call scientific method unoriginal through technology entirely dependent on scientific method. Peace.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI

[baby_jessica75]

the video you left the link for is absolutely irrelivent because I am not saying you are close minded for your ideas of what can or cannot happen all i am saying is there is no way what so ever to determine the limits of something we cannot understand fully. as I said earlier the reality for you may be that these things can not be done. and to begin with all i was saying was that if the use of hypnosis alievates the reactions to an allergine then how is it not a cure? if a person starts to devolop breast or a feminine figure while listening to hypnosis then how is hypnosis not able to do this? there have been many reported cases of people with multiple personality disorder (MPD) who have had some interesting changes when they change from one personality to the other such as scar tissue changes, eye color changes, right or left handedness changes, weather or not they needed corrective lenses to see welland yes even changes in allergies. this in and of itself shows how the mind can bring about remarkable changes in the body. would this not be evidence that the mind is capable of curing allergies? I will leave it for you to decied weather or not I am close minded but from your video it seems to fallow the idea that close mindedness comes from not being courious enough to investagate and just going with an assumption based on belief, I have done many hours of research into MPD and several other things that have led me to believe that the mind can have very real effects over the body. I researched the effects of the mind on the body for two years before decieding to use hypnosis. I had not intended to call you closed minded (if I did infere it I do honestly apoligize!!) you had read my responces and replied with well thought out reasons why you feel the way you do. a close minded person would not pay enough attention to an alternate view point to give a reasonable responce. and to be honest I am actually enjoying this debate ( I say debate because I do not see this as an argument because there is no rudeness no name calling involved just the presentation of alternating viewpoints!). If I have offended with my post please accept my sincere apoligies.

[baby_jessica75]

[quote="Erskip"]

and say that it's rather amusing to hear someone call scientific method unoriginal through technology entirely dependent on scientific method. Peace.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T69TOuqaqXI

invention and science is not the same thing often times inventors go against the scientific opinions of what is and is not possible if they had not technology would not be as advanced as it is. everyone in the scientific community thought the write brothers were out of thier minds because at the time it was believed that it was impossible for people to fly. usally technology advances from a person or group going against what is common scientific knowledge and coventional thinking because they believe they can do things that others believe is impossible and at the time they are riduculed by the main stream scientific community.

[gdawg28092]

Not to take either side, here is my opinion of it. Just like scientific studies where some participants are given a placebo and some are given the real drugs, then some from both sides show positive results. It doesn't matter which you are given the fact is some are helped through the science of the medication and some end up being helped because they believe they were medicated. So what I am saying is physically or mentally it is still a cure. I bought a titanium necklace to wear for shoulder pain I was told by skeptics that it didn't really do anything it was all in my head. My reply to that was , if this was the case I just fixed the problem in my head for $30 I know of other people that have paid $10,000 to get their head fixed and are still screwed up, guess it was a good idea to try. So to me it would be worth a try either way. Just remember if it is a deadly food or insect allergy to proceed with caution when testing the results. If you try let us know the results.

[Erskip]

invention and science is not the same thing often times inventors go against the scientific opinions of what is and is not possible if they had not technology would not be as advanced as it is. everyone in the scientific community thought the write brothers were out of thier minds because at the time it was believed that it was impossible for people to fly. usally technology advances from a person or group going against what is common scientific knowledge and coventional thinking because they believe they can do things that others believe is impossible and at the time they are riduculed by the main stream scientific community.

Hot air balloons and human flight had been around for at least 100 years at that time (much longer if you consult some of the early chinese flight methods), in fact the Wright brothers were not even the first people to build an aeroplane. I can't speak for the American scientific community who presumably were the ones responsible for criticising the Wright brothers, but generally in Europe scientists like Galileo who were the ones who created their own telescopes, theories, experiments and radical ideas which eventually got them hounded and locked up by the catholic church. It could even be a misnomer much like people believing the earth was flat when christopher columbus suggesting it was round, and the idea that a bee's flight is not explainable by modern physics. Besides that a great deal of scientists from Galileo to Isaac Newton tried to formulate workable calculations for things like air resistance and flight.

Most of the prolific scientists up until the 19th were either self taught or self funded to the degree where the line between scientist, mathematician, philosopher, inventer and writer tended to blur anyway. James Joule for instance was a physicist and brewer and ended up being pretty much responsible for the creation of the laws of thermodynamics; but his contribution was due to his intense curiosity, scientific experimentation and scientific papers. And frankly as brave and experimentative as some inventors are and have been, they can't just sit down one day and invent electricity and all the forces and laws which govern it. Plus I should note that early computing was pretty much pioneered by the work of Babbage and Turing, both scientists, mathematicians and logicians.



I've got no particular reason to believe that Multiple personality disorder could inhibit physical changes, right and left handedness (on the other hand) is both plausible and feasible even in people without MPD. All the talk about whether removing symptoms and people's belief or experience of symptoms being the same as curing something is too 'Who is the master who makes the grass green' an argument, that's too much semantics and philosophy to every realistically be resolved. I'm quite naturally incredibly unopen to the idea of experimenting with 'the power of hypnosis' to cure allergies like bee stings purely because of the potential human risk, if anyone really wants to test this then groups can undertake scientific trials in controlled conditions where they can intervene with allergic responses but frankly I see nothing in either biology or psychology to suggest that it would have any help other than alleviating people's response.

[baby_jessica75]

[quote="Erskip"]

Hot air balloons and human flight had been around for at least 100 years at that time (much longer if you consult some of the early chinese flight methods), in fact the Wright brothers were not even the first people to build an aeroplane. I can't speak for the American scientific community who presumably were the ones responsible for criticising the Wright brothers, but generally in Europe scientists like Galileo who were the ones who created their own telescopes, theories, experiments and radical ideas which eventually got them hounded and locked up by the catholic church. It could even be a misnomer much like people believing the earth was flat when christopher columbus suggesting it was round, and the idea that a bee's flight is not explainable by modern physics. Besides that a great deal of scientists from Galileo to Isaac Newton tried to formulate workable calculations for things like air resistance and flight.

Most of the prolific scientists up until the 19th were either self taught or self funded to the degree where the line between scientist, mathematician, philosopher, inventer and writer tended to blur anyway. James Joule for instance was a physicist and brewer and ended up being pretty much responsible for the creation of the laws of thermodynamics; but his contribution was due to his intense curiosity, scientific experimentation and scientific papers. And frankly as brave and experimentative as some inventors are and have been, they can't just sit down one day and invent electricity and all the forces and laws which govern it. Plus I should note that early computing was pretty much pioneered by the work of Babbage and Turing, both scientists, mathematicians and logicians.



I've got no particular reason to believe that Multiple personality disorder could inhibit physical changes, right and left handedness (on the other hand) is both plausible and feasible even in people without MPD. All the talk about whether removing symptoms and people's belief or experience of symptoms being the same as curing something is too 'Who is the master who makes the grass green' an argument, that's too much semantics and philosophy to every realistically be resolved. I'm quite naturally incredibly unopen to the idea of experimenting with 'the power of hypnosis' to cure allergies like bee stings purely because of the potential human risk, if anyone really wants to test this then groups can undertake scientific trials in controlled conditions where they can intervene with allergic responses but frankly I see nothing in either biology or psychology to suggest that it would have any help other than alleviating people's response.

I do concede to your points about the history of science you seem to be alot more knowledgable than I on the subject. and about weather or not you believe about the multiple personality disorder causing physical changes i can not say anything to convince either way I found the information that I came across in my research compelling but there are many different view points on this subject and as always with science for every study you find that says one thing you can find another that says the exact oppisite so there is rreally no where to take that conversation either. but i do want to thank you as I said I have truely enjoyed this debate even if in the end I was proven incorrect on a point or two. my main belief is still that the mind can and does control most if not all things with-in the body and can be used to do anything you want with your body but you have debated your point well I can understand the basis for why you believe the way you do. as I said earlier I believe in infinate possibilites wich means I also believe that there is a possibility I am completely wrong in my beliefs!

[CuteLittleFaery]

Regarding the original post, while the usefulness of hypnosis in curing your latex allergy seems questionable, that doesn't preclude you from using hypnosis to deal with that problem in other ways. You could, for instance, wear garments made from other materials and be hypnotized into believing that they are, in fact, latex (sans the allergic reaction). This is obviously not a perfect solution, but as a workaround for achieving what you want to accomplish (ie, wearing "some nice sexy stuff"), it has potential.

[HypnoWraith]

If the mind can use the placebo effect to help with allergies, why wouldn't hypnosis also be able to help?

[MrLes]

ok ...honestly I dont know if hypnosis can CURE allergies but with the rigth tist...I am sure some of the symptoms might be eased enough to make life more enjoyable

[Alien4420]

Ok yall, I am typically one to answer question but right now I have one. I like to believe anything can be done with hypnosis but is there any cases where Hypnosis was used to cure allergies? Sadly I am allergic to hay dust, bees, and Latex. The Latex is the worst part. I want to wear some nice sexy stuff but I break out when I wear latex :s Any help would be useful.

It's long been known that suggestion can cause allergic symptoms, even in animals, the classic experiment being exposing an animal to a trigger and a substance that causes a severe allergic reaction and then exposing the animal to the trigger without the substance. The severe allergic reaction will recur. There is nothing imaginary about it -- the animal is releasing all the same compounds, histamines etc., that give rise to allergic symptoms. They are simply being released by the nervous system rather than by IgE antibodies. Hypothetically, there are good evolutionary reasons why this should be so having to do with the fact that allergies are a misfiring of the portion of the immune system that fights parasites.

That being the case, it seems entirely plausible to me that the nervous system could suppress an allergic reaction -- doubly so if the allergic reaction is being triggered by the nervous system as opposed to an actual IgE response (it happens in people as well as animals -- there are famous experiments in which asthmatics were told they were being exposed to something that would give them asthma and reacted by getting asthma attacks).

But -- and it's an important caveat -- both bee stings and latex reactions can be life threatening, even if they haven't been for you in the past. And latex reactions tend to get worse with exposure. So it seems to me that the only safe practice here is avoidance, since you can't be sure that hypnosis will have an effect or even if it does prevent the acquisition of the sort of IgE-mediated immune response that can kill you. Hay dust might be a better thing to try, although hay dust can cause a very nasty condition called farmer's lung, so that might not be a good idea either. You might consider allergy shots for the hay allergy -- if the grass shots work, I'm not sure. I've been getting them and they've done wonders. It had gotten to the point where I had severe hay fever all year round, and now I rarely even sniffle or sneeze!

[JonRhodesuk]

yes, research has indicated that hypnosis can help with allergies. A recent study showed that people with hay fever showed significant improvements when they visualised being in an environment of clean fresh mountain cold air.

[CuteLittleFaery]

As Wikipedia once said, Citation Needed.

[Rossyfox]

It's long been known that suggestion can cause allergic symptoms...

If suggestion can truly cause it, that doesn't mean suggestion can suppress it. If there is a direct chemical causative agent present I doubt any amount of suggestion can prevent the allergic reaction from taking place.

[Alien4420]

If suggestion can truly cause it, that doesn't mean suggestion can suppress it. If there is a direct chemical causative agent present I doubt any amount of suggestion can prevent the allergic reaction from taking place.

It's the body itself, rather than an external chemical agent, that produces the chemicals that cause allergic symptoms. An antigen cross links IgE antibodies that are attached to receptors on the surface of a cell, e.g., a mast cell. Then the cell degranulates, releasing inflammatory substances like antihistamines. Essentially a system of land mines for parasitic worms. Exactly how the nervous system ties into this I don't know, and AFAIK no one does, but I do know that the allergic response can be modulated by epinephrine, which is used to treat life-threatening allergic reactions, and epinephrine is released by the sympathetic nervous system. Not necessarily the mechanism we're talking about here, but I have noticed that stress can increase some allergic symptoms, and I think there are some studies that confirm that in the case of hay fever. That could provide an explanation for the results of the study.

Also, histamine itself is a neurotransmitter, though I'm not sure that that's significant here, since I assume that in an allergic response the histamine release is primarily immunological. Or is that a valid assumption? I'm thinking of the studies in which severe allergic reactions are produced in animals by a trigger. If the nervous system is responsible for part of the allergic response, then that part of the response could potentially be squelched through hypnosis.