Question:
I have had it suggested to me that allergic asthma in my case is
psychosomatic. I am interested to know how common this is. How does one
make this judgement, anyway?
In my case, it supposedly comes from my strong belief in a cause
(Christianity) that I am relatively powerless to help. OK, wise guys,
please avoid the issues of religion etc. What's the link between mind and
lungs etc.
It makes one wonder when one of the side-effects of Ventolin is anxiety.
Interested in your comments,
Answer:
How common is very hard to judge, since diagnosis of psychosomatic
illness, especially with something like asthma, is very difficult,
especially when the patient is not "aware" of it.
One woman reported that she gets asthma symptoms when she sees dust on
TV. "Psychosomatic" doesn't (necessarily) mean that you're "psycho",
but that the unconscious brain, via the autonomous nervous system, is
triggering the problem, as it clearly is in her case.
The most common triggers are things the brain perceives as threats. For
instance, I was driving along the other day when I suddenly heard a
siren. It was less than a second from the time I heard the siren until
I spotted an ambulance on the other side of the divided highway --
nowhere near being a problem for me -- but in that time my ANS had
dumped a bunch of adrenalin into my system and my heart was probably
beating 10 beats faster. If I didn't recognize the link between the
siren and my increased heart rate I'd think I'd just had a heart attack.
With the lady that sees dust on TV, it's a slightly different type of
response, but similar. The ANS also controls the constriction of the
airways when presented with a hostile environment. If it perceives some
threat to the lungs, it will constrict the airways to protect them.
The problem is that the brain's perceptions can be "trained" to perceive
or not perceive threats. An ambulance driver likely wouldn't blink an
eye on hearing a siren like I did, while someone mysteriously
transported from the jungles of Borneo would continue in utter fright
even after seeing the ambulance and somehow making the connection
between it and the siren sound.
Odors probably have some of the strongest possibility for being
perceived improperly as threats, since they are both subtle and
pervasive. For instance, I once observed that a pepper-like smell is
associated with the sort of musty environment that used to give me
problems. If I wasn't CONSCIOUSLY aware of this association but became
unconsciously aware of it, I could easily start reacting to pepper the
same way I reacted to the musty environment -- the ANS would recognize
the smell and block the airways to "protect" me from it.
In the case of the TV lady, the visual appearance of dust is the
trigger. She reacts when she sees dust, even before the dust has
entered the lungs and had a chance to trigger reaction. In her case it
would be very difficult to determine what sort of dust she is actually
sensitive to, at least without blindfolding her. In theory it should be
possible for her to train herself to not be sensitive to the visual
appearance of dust, but it could be difficult, since she probably IS
sensitive to some sort of dust and can't tell from visual clues which
sort of dust it is. If she could somehow know visually (or by context)
what sort of dust it was and whether it was a threat or not, then the
conscious brain usually has the ability to suppress most of the tendency
of the ANS to react, and, after several successful episodes of such
conscious suppression the ANS will be trained to NOT react.
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