A few years ago, my son and I were in the depths of medical confusion. He had been diagnosed with suspected Crohn’s disease at age five, along with severe food allergies and intolerances to sugar, starch, eggs, and dairy.

The little dude wished he could eat like normal kids. Santa (and the universe) listened!

As I detail in this blog, we tried everything: pediatric gastroenterology on Oʻahu, functional medicine consults in Oregon, mold testing, detox kits, and every gut-healing protocol on the market. We even chased mold spores out of our tropical cottage — an impossible task in Hawaiʻi.

The only thing shifting was ... my anxiety. My stress levels were through the roof, my sleep quality was awful, and our household felt like it was operating under constant threat.

Then one day, while listening to yet another podcast on environmental triggers, I heard something that stopped me in my tracks:

“The nervous system can keep you stuck — unable to heal from mold exposure even after the exposure ends.”

That single sentence cracked something open in me. What if the "chronic" in his issues wasn't due to mold, or Crohn’s, or allergies, but to a body that couldn't feel safe enough to heal? Talk about a big mom-awakening there.

It led me to Annie Hopper’s Dynamic Neural Retraining System (DNRS), where she explained how chronic psychological stressors can “wire” the nervous system into perpetual high alert. Her words mirrored my own life — the overdoing, overthinking, and constant scanning for danger. Was I unintentionally creating a feeling of "unsafe" for my own little guy? Maybe.

So, I myself started the DNRS practice, committing to healing my own chronic stress and retraining my brain’s nervous and immune responses. I wanted to soothe my very own tattered nervous system response and see how that balances our shared world. The results were … amazing. My body softened. My old running injuries resolved (which was mind-blowing). My energy lifted. The nervous system work even helped my entire family's emotional reactivity (the mom is the emotional captain of the family in most households, whether you want the responsibility or not). Our house went from code red to code yellowish-green. The kids were happier, more easy-going, less emotional reactivity, and, well, quite simply, there was more joy. It was a magical feeling we were experiencing.

Still, our allergic disease patterns lingered — the food intolerances for him, the sneezing, the itching, and histamine sensitivity for me.

Then a naturopathic friend mentioned a woman named Nell who worked with a “frequency healing system” to eliminate or reduce allergies and sensitivities. I’ll admit, I thought it sounded ... absurd. Like, Looney Tunes. Butttttt, like any mother trying to help her child, I would do anything to get him better. Even, um, energy healing? Scientific me? Yes. At that point, we had nothing to lose.

The Day My Allergies Vanished

My son’s results came first. After four visits, his reactions to certain foods disappeared. He could suddenly eat starches, sugars, eggs, and dairy — foods that had once caused true gastric distress. It was a hallelujah moment for our family. Yet… nothing changed for me through the first four appointments. Histamines still decimated me nearly every day, triggered by what I thought was food and environmental triggers. I decided this “woo woo” work didn't work on me.

But then came session five — focused, Nell said, on “emotional allergies.” I almost laughed. How could someone be allergic to emotions? I mean, could my eyes roll any further back into my (very closed-minded) head??

But I went along. I had to appear “all in” for my son, after all :) She identified seven emotions my body was “reacting” to — some including Weary, Unworthy, Blame, Forgiveness, and Lack of Control. [Phew, that was a doozy to unpack for me, and a lot of journaling about this later helped me understand why these emotions were such big triggers for me].

Nell also explained that clearing these didn’t mean I’d never feel them — only that my body would stop interpreting them as danger. They would no longer be a "stress" to my body, so to speak. Instead, I would feel the emotion (obviously) but it wouldn't signal code red to my body.

What happened? The incredible. The next morning, my allergy symptoms were gone. No more morning sneezing, no itchy eyes, no food reactions. I could eat the high histamine/liberating foods that used to cause me histamine chaos: oranges, sourkraut, and coffee. It felt miraculous — and totally unsettling. My scientific brain needed to understand why.

HOW DID WE JUST ELIMINATE MY HISTAMINE ISSUES WITH EMOTIONAL RELEASE????? Let me explain what I have learned since then, and why I’m now a true convert in healing through physics :)

The Science: How Stress Triggers Allergic Reactions

You can be stressed no matter what you're doing if you are constantly worrying or ruminating or rehashing, blaming or judging or criticizing

While the experience seemed mystical, the underlying physiology actually makes sense. Research shows that stress triggers allergic inflammation through a cascade of biological changes in the body’s immune system.

When we experience stressful events, the brain activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, releasing stress hormones like cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine.

Under short bursts, cortisol helps control inflammation! Pretty cool. But during chronic stress, elevated cortisol levels begin to suppress regulatory T-cells — the immune system cells that normally keep allergic inflammation in check — while simultaneously increasing inflammatory cytokines such as IL-4 and IL-13, which amplify allergic reactions [1].

A landmark study published in Ann Allergy Asthma Immunol found that when participants were subjected to acute stress (public speaking plus mental math, haha omg), they showed a 75 % increase in skin-test wheal size compared to baseline, and highly anxious individuals were four times more likely to develop late-phase allergic responses the next day [2].

Meanwhile, research from the Mississippi Medical Center demonstrated that people with sustained stress and elevated cortisol levels experience more severe allergic disease — including asthma, atopic dermatitis, and allergic rhinitis [3].

The Stress–Inflammation Cascade

Chronic stress doesn’t just alter hormones; it fuels chronic inflammation. When the body releases cortisol continuously, it dysregulates other systems — from blood vessels (increasing blood pressure) to the immune system itself.

Stress also triggers histamine, leukotrienes, and prostaglandins — the same mediators that cause watery eyes, congestion, and skin rashes. In fact, stressed allergy sufferers often notice their hay fever or food allergies flare even when pollen levels stay the same.

We also see that chronic stress impairs anti-inflammatory macrophages — the many cells that resolve inflammation — leading to prolonged tissue irritation and the recruitment of inflammatory cells like eosinophils [4].

Another factor: neuropeptides such as Substance P. These are released by stressed nerves and directly activate mast cells, making allergy flare ups more likely even without exposure to dust mites or pet dander.

Why Stressful Emotions Can Literally Trigger Allergy Symptoms

Think of the immune system as a mirror of the nervous system. When one is overreactive, the other follows.

Studies show that people with poorly managed stress (think: emotional volatility, ruminating, rehashing, supressing opinions or ones voice, shutting down, frozen with inability or expectations, the list goes on) experience significantly higher stress-related allergy flare ups and report lower well-being [5].

Stress levels and allergy severity rise and fall together — a true mind-body feedback loop!

That’s why many allergy sufferers develop anxiety or even mild depression: constant sneezing, congestion, and runny nose symptoms can disrupt sleep, elevate blood pressure, and reduce resilience. And in a loop, the histamines circulating support the creation of anxiety! It's why you may suddenly feel very irritated or short tempered when you are extremely allergenic.

Left unchecked, this loop can even influence other inflammatory diseases like, ahem, endometriosis through shared inflammatory response pathways.

The Nervous System’s Role in Immune Function

This is where my story — and the science — intersect. The autonomic nervous system constantly communicates with the immune system through electrochemical signaling. When we live in chronic fight-or-flight, our immune function becomes hypersensitive, misidentifying harmless exposures like tree pollen, dust mites, or certain foods as threats.

The field of psychoneuroimmunology confirms that chronic stress shifts the immune balance toward a Th2-dominant pattern — the same one driving allergic disease. In other words:

When your body feels unsafe, it starts attacking what isn’t dangerous.

That’s why both emotional trauma and ongoing environmental triggers can intensify allergy symptoms even in the absence of new allergens.

Breaking the Stress–Allergy Cycle

The good news? The connection works both ways. When you reduce stress and balance your emotional state, you calm the immune response and give your body space to heal. It's why neural retraining programs like DNRS or Primal Trust advertise their support in reducing allergies and sensitivities, both food-based and environmental. It’s also why working with the physics healing of the body, as I am doing in my new practice, can be potentially more supportive than healing in the chemistry side of things (supplements, protocols, strict diets, etc).

The study of physics shows us how energy flows, and this help us understand that managing our energy regulation systems (ie stress and emotions) can lower symptom frequency and severity:

Mindfulness meditation decreases cortisol by 23 % and improves immune function.
Progressive muscle relaxation reduces allergy severity by 20–30 %.
Yoga and Tai Chi (gentle physical activity) lower inflammatory markers by 25 % [6].
Massage therapy helps reduce inflammation and balance blood pressure.
Maintaining adequate sleep (7–8 hours nightly) restores cortisol rhythm and supports the body’s immune system.

Even small lifestyle shifts — regular exercise, balanced meals, mindful breathing — can stabilize stress hormones and lower the likelihood that stress triggers will trigger allergy symptoms in the first place.

Emotions, Frequency, and the Electrical Body

So what about “emotional allergies”?

If the immune system is listening to the nervous system, it makes sense that unresolved emotions — guilt, fear, or weariness — could become internal stress triggers. My “energetic clearing” sessions may have simply helped re-educate my brain to stop sending emergency signals in response to those emotions.

From a Psychoneuroimmune perspective, this is a holistic approach to health — addressing the electrical aspect of healing alongside the biochemical. By restoring coherence between brain, body, and emotion, we can calm overactive immune system cells and quiet unnecessary allergic responses.

In my experience, this re-patterning brought not only symptom relief but a deeper sense of safety — a nervous system no longer living in defense.

How to Support Your System

Come see me at my new clinic where we help re-wire energy circuits!

Here are gentle, science-backed ways to support both stress management and allergy recovery:

Track your symptoms. Log when allergy symptoms or food allergies worsen and what emotions preceded them. Patterns will emerge. Angry with your husband and feel symptoms? Rehashing past humiliation and start getting allergenic?
Ground before reacting. Three deep breaths into your middle back, and exhale slowly out and down your tailbone. Dispelling energy with breath like this can lower stress hormones enough to blunt an impending flare.
Sleep intentionally. Protect your circadian rhythm to prevent chronic inflammation and improve sleep quality. I know the more tired I was, the more my allergies would nuke me.
Eat to heal. As I lay out in my book Heal Endo, nutrient-dense foods, blood sugar-balanced meals, and antioxidants help reduce inflammation and stabilize the immune response.
Clean your environment. Control dust mites and pet dander as much as possible; use air purifiers during high-pollen or allergy seasons.
Come see me at my new clinic. Come next year I will be offering some seriously cool techniques that help support bodies in moving out of "threat"mode.

Finding Hope and Lasting Relief

For me and my son, we learned that, healing required taking control of what we could beyond the chemical (more protocols, more practitioners): our mindset, our environment, and our stress physiology. By creating safety in the nervous system, we helped the immune system remember balance.

Managing allergies isn’t only about avoiding triggers — it’s about retraining the terrain that overreacts to them. With patience and consistency, you can truly achieve lasting relief and restore your sense of well-being.

Because sometimes the body isn’t broken. It’s just been protecting you for far too long.

Disclaimer

Myself, nor the Biolight Qi-5 and other frequency-based tools mentioned here do not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease! Always consult your licensed medical provider for diagnosis and treatment of allergies or other conditions.

References

Chronic Stress and Allergic Inflammation — University of Mississippi Medical Center, Clinical Immunology(2020)
Laboratory Study on Acute Stress and Allergic Responses — Ann Allergy Asthma Immunol (2012)
Cortisol Levels and Severity of Allergic Disease — Mississippi Medical Center (2018)
Macrophage Function and Stress Disruption — Curr Allergy Asthma Rep (2019)
Stress and Allergy Severity Correlation — Allergy Asthma Proc (2016)
Yoga and Tai Chi for Inflammatory Disease Reduction — Journal of Clinical Immunology (2021)