If you have asthma, consider these scenarios: have you ever had an attack of shortness of breath, wheezing, or coughing, in the midst of worrying about, say, finances or your rebellious child? Perhaps you have faced up to a recent layoff, and you are worried about facing up to the pressure of doing well on job interviews, after having been out of the job market for so long. If you have experienced asthma attacks during any particularly stressful situation, you may be wondering: is there a link between stress and asthma?
Interestingly, what used to be defined as a purely respiratory problem has recently been shown to have a certain link to stress. When asked whether stress can trigger asthma attacks, doctors are now willing to say a resounding “Yes!” They concede that stress does not result in asthma in a person who does not have it, but it is proven to worsen the case for people who already suffer from it. They have seen how stressful and anxious episodes in life result in more frequent attacks of asthma, and during such times, control of the disease has been shown to become more difficult.
But is it not all a psychological effect, all in the person’s head? Certainly, this was what doctors used to tell asthma patients, when they were puzzled about the connection between asthma and stress. However, recently, it has been proven that attacks induced by stress are definitely not something that the patient simply imagines is happening. Since it is an inflammatory disease focused on the person’s airways, doctors emphasize the importance of using medication to avoid symptoms or to open the airways when a person undergoes an attack; this may likely be the reason why stress has been so often ruled out as a trigger, since it is not something that is physically tangible.
These recent years, though, researchers have made a study on the different events that may be linked to symptoms of asthma: the list includes public speaking, exams in school, conflict in the family, wide-coverage disasters, or violence. It seems that stress may either affect the physical body directly, or result in people who are suffering from asthma to fail to manage their symptoms as effectively as they could minus the stressful scenario.
For one thing, stress causes physiological changes in a person’s body; this includes the release of chemicals as triggered by the strong emotions. For example, chemicals like leukotrienes and histamine, which are released when a person undergoes extreme stress, are shown to trigger a narrowing of a person’s airways. Also, hormones related to stress are shown to minimize a person’s natural ability to ward off colds and respiratory infections, which are also triggers of asthma attacks.
In addition to these physiological changes, people who undergo stress or anxiety may also forget to take their medication to dodge an attack. This means that the simple forgetting may have caused the attack, as there is no medication to keep the airways protected.
If you have asthma and you realize a lot of your attacks have been triggered by stress, what do you do? You cannot just very well lock yourself up at home so you never have to face up to stressful situations. As such, you will need to take some steps not only to manage your asthma, but also to manage your stress.
What are the things that stress you out? Many people will likely tick off external factors, such as financial problems, marital problems, or stressful work or school environments. But the bottom line is, it depends on the way you look at things. Church leaders find a common root of all stress, and scientists also affirm the root: it turns out that all stress stem from a certain degree of condemnation over a certain thing or over life in general. Science has shown that when a person feels condemned his cells wind up fighting each other, much in the same way that cancer cells kill healthy cells.
This shows us that stress may be dealt with from the root by dealing with issues of condemnation: this is why many people enjoy complete healing from asthma or other diseases related to condemnation when they realize they have been forgiven, that somebody else was already punished on their behalf, as is taught in certain religions. Then again, it still depends on your personal beliefs and principles, but just be sure to find a way to deal with stress in your life to avoid unnecessary attacks.
(Written by Jessica Lord)
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