Allergic to stress?

A friend of mine reacts badly to gluten and stays away from products that contain it. He used to live in London where he had a more stressful job, longer working hours, shorter sleeping hours, a higher intake of alcohol and marijuana, and a difficult relationship with his girlfriend. If he ate anything with gluten in it, his body went on to red alert. He’d experience intense discomfort in his torso and feel physically ill.

But since moving back to the north of England, he has settled into a less pressured existence. He has an enjoyable job, gets more exercise and better-quality sleep, is happily single, and has pretty much stopped drinking and taking recreational drugs, at least with any kind of regularity. Now, he can eat a sandwich made with wholewheat bread and experience only the mildest of symptoms. The reaction is still there, but it has been dialled right down.

It has been widely reported that allergies are on the rise. Allergies that only a few years ago were rare or unheard of are now becoming widespread. More and more children are growing up coping with allergies, some of which can be quite debilitating. Some are even potentially lethal histamine responses. But nobody really seems to know why this is the case. Air pollutants are often blamed. Or pesticides and chemicals used in food processing.

These could well be true. But I’d suggest, at least judging by my friend’s experiences, that stress is a huge factor. When we are locked in a sympathetic nervous response, producing excessive amounts of cortisol over prolonged periods, our bodies’ inflamed state is much more sensitive to allergens.

So many people are living as my friend used to do. Under pressure from work and family commitments, they are pushing their bodies and brains further and further. They are sacrificing essential things like sufficient quality sleep and rest, a good diet, slow and mindful eating behaviours, country walks and hobbies, time to play and to slow down for a while, all for the sake of the next deadline, the next sale, the promised pay rise, fear of redundancy, of being late, of missing out, of falling behind. They push themselves harder and harder until finally there is a collapse. Their health fails them. They suffer a heart attack, or a nervous breakdown. And then, if it’s not already too late, they begin to make changes.

Perhaps this hypersensitivity to allergens is a kind of warning signal our bodies our giving us. The body is saying, “Hold on, I’m getting really inflamed here. I’m exhausted. Haven’t you noticed?” But too many people don’t notice. They’re too busy to notice. Too focused on external pressures to look inside and see what’s going on.

Can’t sleep? Take some sleeping pills and fall unconscious instead. Can’t wake up? Pump yourself full of caffeine and nicotine. Can’t wait for the guy in front of you to pull away from the traffic lights? Fly into a boiling and impotent rage at your steering wheel. No time to eat? Grab some ultra-processed fast food and guzzle it while you type. Type faster. Take fewer breaks. Squeeze more and more out of yourself until you’re a neurotic, zombified husk.

Won’t somebody please think of the children?

Why are allergies becoming more prevalent in children, then? They don’t work twelve-hour shifts. They don’t have to cope with pressure and deadlines. Except, increasingly, they do. From primary school they are tested and graded. Play is sanitised and increasingly proscribed. They are infected by our obsession with safety. They are swamped with information, overloaded with the burden of knowing.

And when they’re not being pushed at school, they’re often mesmerised by flickering blue screens at home, where even more information floods unchecked into their prefrontal cortex. They struggle to find their own identities in a vapid, glamorous, shimmering, false world of global social networks and unprecedented disconnection. Their growing, restless bodies move less and less, and their anxieties and disruptive behaviours spiral out of control. We have more clinical depression now amongst children than ever before, and it’s getting worse.

Not only that, but children are sensitive creatures, and they are bound to soak up and reflect the stresses of the adults around them. Stress is like a contagion, and it’s so entrenched now in our frantic society that it has become normalised. It’s what we expect and accept. The trouble is, our bodies don’t accept it. They can’t. When we are always “On”, our bodies go haywire. And so we see record numbers of people, both old and young, with chronic anxiety, sleeping and eating disorders, anger and addiction issues, irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, ulcers, migraines, problems with blood pressure and immunity, hormonal imbalances, cancers… and allergies.

It’s not that allergies are on the rise. Stress is on the rise. And not the healthy kind of stress that pushes us to act and excel, and then switches off for us to recuperate and gather ourselves; but the unhealthy kind of stress that is chronic, habitual, and excessive. When we live continuously in this inflamed, sympathetic state of “fight or flight”, our ability to deal with aggravating factors such as allergens is suppressed. Allergies may well be exacerbated by pesticides and greenhouse gases, but I would suggest that our inability to deal with allergens is exacerbated by stress. In a state of enervation, our immune systems panic at the slightest disruption. The result? A mysterious epidemic of gluten intolerance.

Solutions in stillness

So what can be done? I would suggest that rather than raging at “the system”, at our bosses, or fossil fuel magnates, big business, big pharma, food corporations, banks, governments, social media, news stations, or any of the other “evils” that perpetuate this stressful status quo, we should look instead to ourselves. Those things are only symptoms of the world we create for ourselves. And the world we create comes from within us. Our experience is not “out there”. The more time we spend ruminating on the injustice of it all, the angrier we are going to get. Those cortisol levels are just gonna keep on climbing. The only thing you really have control over, it may horrify you to know, is yourself. Your own responses. Disengage automatic and shift to manual.

Slow.

Down.

Make time. Switch off the TV, switch off 24-hour breaking news, switch off social media, switch off the endless parade of podcasts and box sets, and just slow down. Go to bed earlier. Eat carefully. Eat healthily. Exercise, but gently and moderately, without some pointless external goal of beating a certain time, or lifting a certain weight, or losing so many kilograms, or burning so many calories. Just enjoy it. Pay attention to what’s going on inside.

Observe the quality of your breathing, the tone of your voice, the way you move.

Slow down.

Wake up from this state of self-induced hypnosis. When was the last time you did nothing? I mean, literally nothing. No distractions. Just you, by yourself, in a dark room. Sitting. Being. Listening. You can make time for it. It’s not a waste of time. It’s the most productive thing you’ll do all day.

Give it twenty minutes at first. Just sit. Don’t try to do anything. Don’t slow your breathing. Don’t acquire a certain posture. Don’t try to stop thinking. All of that will come with practice. For now, just sit. Do nothing and pay attention. If your mind wanders, gently draw it back to listening, to feeling the body breathe. It’s intensely pleasurable, if you just let go and allow it. Give yourself space. Give yourself time. Just twenty minutes, and your whole body will unwind. It will enter a parasympathetic state. You’ll digest your food better. You’ll breathe better and deeper. You’ll be able to sleep. You’ll have more energy. Your mind will relax.

With practice, you will become more patient, kinder, more content and comfortable in your own skin. You will react to things more consciously, more wisely. You’ll become more aware, more focused, less scattered and under-pressure. Instead of feeling drawn and tired, you will feel spacious and present. Everything will slow down, and you will have more time. All this from just sitting and doing nothing.

It takes practice, of course. And it’s a practice that can go really deep. It can really change things. But anybody can do it. There are no barriers, except for your own excuses, your own reluctance, your own doubt and forgetfulness. My suggestion is, don’t think of it as “Meditation”. Don’t make it a chore. Don’t add it to your To Do list. Look forward to it. Make room for it. Just sit for a minute. Allow that minute to roll into two, three… before you know it half an hour will have passed, and you will feel wonderful. Centred. Rejuvenated. Forget those anti-ageing creams… forget Botox… external concerns will fade away.

But if meditation seems too intense, or too “out there”, there are alternatives. Brisk, mindful walking, with a soft gaze and your attention on your steps. Try not to waste any energy as sound. Make light, silent footfalls. Feel your body moving and breathing. Enjoy it. If a thought comes along, step away from it mentally and watch it drift away.

Or, when it’s time for a meal, prepare one yourself. Enjoy the scents and textures. Anticipate. Then, when you sit down to it, turn off any distractions. Focus only on your food. Be ponderous and sensuous. Luxuriate in it, like you’re in one of those phoney chocolate advertisements. Eat one morsel at a time. Chew thoroughly – experience all the flavours, and notice how they change as you masticate. Only select the next morsel once you’ve swallowed down the first. Don’t hurry. And if you catch yourself hurrying, poke fun at yourself and slow down again. Don’t take things too seriously. No crime has been committed here; you’re just eating your dinner.

When you finish, sit a while. Allow your body to digest. Feel the food inside your digestive tract. What? No reflux today? How strange… Sit a little longer. Read for a while. Now go for a little walk… Hold on there! Slow down! Think reggae, not techno. Adagio, not presto. You’re still digesting; we’re just encouraging a little movement to help things along. You see, it’s all about the quality of how you do things. It ain’t wotcha do, it’s the way that you do it: that’s what gets results.

A treatment such as therapeutic massage or acupuncture could also be a great way to slow down. Talking to an acupuncturist in a therapeutic relationship, lying on a table and being touched in a reassuring and relaxing way, allowing the needles to gently steer your body into healing itself… just lying there and resting your mind, feeling the weight of gravity upon your body, feeling the breath move in and out of your torso, will help to bring you out of your chronically wired, hyper-vigilant state. That’s guaranteed.

Moving solutions

Personally, I get a huge amount of pleasure and benefit from practising tai chi. Over and over, the same, slow, precise, flowing movements. Remaining observant and curious amidst the repetition. “What else is here? What else?” Going deeper, layer after layer. Never saying, “Okay, that’s it. That’s as far as it goes. I know it all now.” There’s always another layer to uncover. Only when we stop holding on to what we think we know, and embrace what we don’t know, can we truly start to live. Only then can we be present, spontaneous, and respond to what is really here, rather than what we think is here.

But if tai chi sounds too dull, there are other ways, too. Yoga, or Qigong, or martial arts like Aikido, Wing Chun, Baguazhang, or Xingyiquan, all place great emphasis on internal awareness. Integrating mind and body. Listening. Exploring. Feeling. Being mindful of our limits.

Many of the professional athletes we admire actually end up sacrificing their health because they’ve pushed their bodies too hard. They end up with chronic injuries, or simply depleted. Chinese health practices value quality of movement (fluidity, connectedness, grace and balance) over quantity (how much, how far, how fast, how strong). The point of exercise is to nourish the body, not to exhaust it. If we end up breathless, beetroot-faced, and dripping with sweat, we’ve probably gone too far.

Warming the body to the point of just beginning to sweat is about right. Push yourself a little, by all means, but don’t do it all the time. I love going barefoot running over moorlands and on woodland trails, but I don’t do it every day, and I take it easier in the winter months. Cardiovascular exercise is an important facet of a comprehensive exercise plan, but we shouldn’t over-exert ourselves.

Nor should we focus too much on one aspect. Chinese methods include standing practice (known as Ding Shi or Zhan Zhuang), where we stretch, relax, focus the mind, raise the skeleton, sink the soft tissues, and find and develop internal connections through static postures; and loosening practices (known as Fan Song Gong), where we allow the body to soften and swing, move from our centre and release muscular tension. In Qigong we keep the mind still while the body moves gently, smoothly and fluidly; in Dao Yin we move more forcefully to purge and cleanse the body.

There are lots of other options beyond the punishing slog of treadmills, spin bikes, free weights and machines. Pick something you can look forward to. Find a realistic level of commitment. Make it sustainable, and make it fun. Be creative and diverse. Don’t “train” or “work out”; just move and enjoy moving. Inquire into sensations, get a sense for your internal structures – your bones, muscles, sinews and organs – and for the spaces around and between those structures.

Try stretching and foam rolling; using acupressure or massage balls; using Swiss balls, balance boards, and skipping ropes; try asanas, inversions, and resistance work using body weight; or finding new and unusual ways of moving the body – animal mimicry, spontaneous movement, dance… anything! We just need to get things flowing. Think babbling brook, not stagnant pond.

Placing more value on organising the body around the core, and improving suppleness and joint mobility, seems eminently sensible, rather than just trying to run further and faster, or lift heavier and heavier weights. In our bodies, in our minds, in our lives, we need to find centre.

Most of the people I know who are regular long-term gym-goers have some kind of chronic or recurring injury. Generally, this is due to bad form, over-enthusiasm, peer pressure, or over-exertion. Also, because they’re plugged into their headphones they’re not really listening to their bodies, and they have purely external goals such as stopwatch times or rep counts. Internal practices like yoga, tai chi and qi gong emphasise actively listening to the body, and with this kind of inner awareness you’re much less likely to strain something. What’s more, when your mind is immersed in your body’s activity, when you’re actually present, your efforts are more fruitful. Your awareness and intention are essential parts of it, and these are much-neglected factors in the modern, mechanistic approach to exercise.

I don’t think you can really put a value on how much is too much exercise – that depends entirely on your age, weight, diet, constitution, gender. It fluctuates according to your state of mind, your general level of activity, the climate, the seasons, the time of day. What matters is to refrain from draining the body’s resources, and to have an appropriate balance between activity and rest. Yin and Yang, brother…

Give it a rest

Rest is vital. We underrate it in modern society, or rather, we pay it lip service and then get on with the really important stuff. We have a mechanistic approach to sleep. We allocate a minimum number of hours to be “wasted” on instructive dreams and deep rest, and dispel this annoyingly unproductive state with a shrill, insistent torture-alarm in the morning.

Then we dither and delay.

Then we rush around like lunatics, enacting the same mindless, unvarying routines each morning, so we can go exhaust ourselves with tasks and meetings and chatter at work, and then collapse in front of flickering screens and tubs and buckets of greasy and sugary foods in the evening. We wonder why we’re tired. “All I did last night was sit and watch my latest box set and then drift into a mindless scrolling trance on my phone.” Active, active, active. Doing, doing, doing. Always looking out, never in. Never stop. Always go.

And then we collapse.

Everything caves in. Blue lights flash. If only we’d listened. If only we’d slowed down.

We may well have an allergy crisis in modern society. But it’s only a symptom; a symptom of stress. But even stress isn’t the root cause. There has been a Great Unlearning in the modern age. We’ve arrogantly dismissed the old wives’ tales, the folk wisdom, the elders and shamans, the witch doctors and scholar sages. We’ve supplanted it all with productivity targets, profit margins, packed schedules, full diaries, fussin’ an’ fightin’. We live in a permanent state of distraction. We’re terrified of silence. Strangers to ourselves.

We’ve forgotten how to live. We fight against nature instead of flowing with it. We enforce artificial patterns on our lives. Timetables. Rotas. Alarm clocks. Shifts. We illuminate the night. We eat or exercise before bed. We view our bodies and minds as machines or tools. Things to be used and exploited. We search endlessly for efficiency, for maximum output. We cover our failings and inadequacies with pills and quick fixes. We become increasingly unconscious. Increasingly serious. Increasingly knowing.

Where does all this get us? Our technologies are like superpowers. Our understanding of nature, chemistry and cosmos is supreme. We’re subatomic. We’re supersonic. Our medicines are like miracles. We’re connected like never before. But we’re disconnected from our own selves. We’ve never been more miserable, bored, and ill. Never been more inflamed, frantic, and neurotic. Most of us don’t realise until it’s too late. This is the insidious reality we’ve created. We’ve lost our way. Forgotten the point. Divorced from meaning. We’ve defined ourselves silly and forgotten who we are. What this is.

We’ve polluted our world, but don’t worry – we’re too clever by far. We have a cunning plan. We know exactly how to solve this conundrum, and can foresee all possible consequences. Interference is the best policy. Here’s the graph to prove it. Just don’t look back.

We think we know best. We cram everything in and suffocate ourselves, as though it’s all so incredibly important. And we leave out the things that actually are important: good eating habits, sleep, rest, exercise. Peace. Ease. Satisfaction. It’s so simple and obvious, yet it’s so easy to ignore. And then we suffer. We create our own problems, and then struggle to resolve them. We make things complicated. We need more. We need to try harder. Push harder.

No. We need less. We need to release our iron grip. We need to wake up, take notice, and respond appropriately. Our bodies know best. Let’s just listen to them. Let’s just relax a little. Let’s make time for ourselves. Let’s just slow down, and let go. Bring everything to stillness. And then listen. Really listen. Stop doing. Stop knowing. Slow down. And let go.

Let.

Go.