House dust mites are found in every home, but in some homes more than others. Some people develop an allergy to these tiny dusty critters. This is incredibly annoying because it can affect your breathing. The good news is that hypnosis can help against some allergies, such as those to dust mites.
Want to know what hypnosis can do for dust mites? Then read on.
Most people think that a dust mite allergy is part of asthma, but people can also develop it later in life. This causes quite a few changes. Your entire home decor can be changed because of it.
- Where you used to have carpeting, you now have to go for tarp or laminate.
- Where you used to have curtains, you now use blinds.
- Where before you could easily take a package of bedding from the store, now you have to watch what you buy.
It is an exhausting process that is necessary to suffer less from the house dust mite allergy for at least the rest of your life. Because very gradually, the house dust allergy can creep into your body, especially if your home was a little dusty at first.
From one day to the next, your immune system can determine that a dust mite substance is dangerous to your body, when in fact it is not, and therefore your defense mechanisms can go into unnecessary overdrive.
This is exactly what happened to Anne when she was 45 years old. Her home was always a little messy. She had many rugs and the bedding could also be left on the bed for a few weeks instead of 1 week.
Yet she began to suffer more and more from closing airways and stinging eyes. Because she had glasses, she thought it was because her eyes needed a different prescription, but new glasses didn't help anything.
The family doctor gave the redeeming answer after a test, and so then she had to make all these changes in her home. This included purchasing a steamcleaner to kill and clean anything that cannot be seen by eye. This cost quite a bit of savings, so the vacation that year was cancelled for a while.
She also had to go to great lengths to keep her mattress free of dust mites. In fact, the mattress had to be ironed every week with a sheet in between so that the mattress was not damaged. This was way too much hassle for her.
In the process, she was given medication for the allergic reaction, but she found the side effects to.
Therefore, she tried to find other methods to get rid of her allergy. Self-hypnosis was the solution for her. Now she does change her bed weekly and likes to clean with the steam cleaner, but it doesn't all have to be so super precise anymore.
What is dust mites?
House dust mites are very small critters about 0.2-0.3 millimeters in size that live off dead skin cells from people and animals, dust and mold in your home.
A house dust mite lives about 19 days, lays 60-100 eggs and can leave 2,000 pieces of droppings. It also leaves the skeleton after death if not cleaned enough.
Why can you develop an allergy to dust mites?
It is not necessarily the house dust mite itself that you are allergic to but the enzyme peptidase 1, which the house dust mite uses to break down its food. This enzyme also remains in the feces and corpse of the dust mite.
If you inhale this you may sneeze, for example, and on the skin this can cause irritations that cause eczema .
People with asthma are often more likely to develop this allergy, and so are people who have too much dust mites in their homes.
Symptoms of a dust mite allergy
Having a dust mite allergy can be recognized by the following symptoms, which can persist throughout the year:
- Sneeze.
- Running nose.
- Itchy eyes.
- Watery Eyes.
- Stuffy nose (lots of urge to nose pick).
- Itchy nose, mouth and/or throat.
- Fluid/slime running from the back of the nose into your mouth/throat.
- Kuchen.
Combined with asthma, it can also have the following symptoms:
- Difficulty breathing.
- Chest tightness or chest pain.
- Beeping sound when exhaling.
- Difficulty sleeping due to breathing problems.
Diagnosis for dust mite allergy
To find out if you suffer from a house dust mite allergy, the doctor performs a test on your skin. In this, your skin is exposed to the substance that causes the allergic reaction.
GPs may also choose to take a blood test precisely if your skin is unresponsive to determine if you suffer from this allergy.
What to do about a dust mite allergy?
Prevention is better than cure in the case of dust mite allergy. In fact, cleaning when you already have the allergy seems to have little effect on your body's reaction. Therefore, always try to prevent this allergy and take the following steps (even to be on the safe side if you already have the allergy).
- Wash your bedding weekly at a minimum of 60 degrees Celsius.
- Use anti-allergic bedding, usually with a density of more than 250 threads.
- Hang bedding in full sun for at least 3 hours.
- Make sure the room temperature is below 22 degrees Celsius.
- Make sure the humidity in the home stays below 45%.
- Vacuum your home regularly.
Doctors also often prescribe antihistamine and other medications to suppress the allergic reaction.
Does hypnosis help allergy to dust mites?
Hypnosis can certainly help against an allergy to dust mites. Many allergies caused by contact with something can be relieved by using hypnosis. A pollen allergy can also be tackled with hypnosis.
Exactly how this works are still open to researchers, but it is already clear that the connection between the brain and the immune system matters. A good connection between body and mind seems to have a positive impact on reducing allergies.
Thereby, there are also theories that an allergy can be learned behavior. Therefore, hypnosis can help get rid of dust mite allergy in 2 ways. First, it helps to strengthen the connection between body and mind. Second, it helps to change automatic behaviors.
What techniques should you use against this allergy?
There are several techniques you can use against dust mite allergy. Such as post-hypnotic suggestions and also neuro linguistic programming helps to change thoughts and behaviors.
Post-hypnotic suggestions
Expectations clients have about the outcome of a treatment for dust mite allergy are more important than getting a pill that works. For example, we know that a placebo helps against house dust mite allergy.
Post hypnotic suggestions about what people can expect when they are back in the room with dust mites can therefore work well to bring about the allergic change.
You can think of suggestions such as:
"After this hypnosis session, you come home to the room where you normally cough. Instead, you notice that you can actually breathe and not so much happens."
Imitating Placebo Effect
Another post-hypnotic suggestion you can perform is one in which you imitate the placebo effect. If someone suffers from dust mites, you can have him/her drink a glass of water with a (small) vitamin C pill every day. The suggestion you then give is the following:
"Vitamin C is very important for a healthy immune system. By taking a (small) vitamin C pill daily, you will ensure that you are no longer allergic to dust mites."
Anchor
Anchoring is a technique widely used during NLP. Your feelings about a particular room, such as that you always suffer from dust mites in the living room, must then be disconnected and the feelings of that room must then be linked to a room or moment when you do not suffer from dust mites.
The hypnotherapist can link your expectation about a particular room to a room where you never suffer from dust mites, such as the bathroom.
Visualizing yourself symptom free
Visualizations also play an important role in hypnosis and so too in countering a dust mite allergy. Visualizing yourself without symptoms of the allergy makes it much more likely that you will actually suffer less from the symptoms of the dust mite allergy.
To make this easier, you can visualize yourself in an environment where you do not suffer from a dust mite allergy, such as in the snow or outside at the seaside.
In addition, there are other techniques that can be used to address dust mite allergy.
Want to learn more about hypnosis and NLP? Then come to a playshop or check out the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training programs .
Sources:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0079576
http://www.aafa.org/page/dust-mite-allergy.aspx
https://www.karger.com/Article/PDF/126074
