Has anyone overcome cat allergies?

Thank you so much for sharing this!! I'm so happy to hear your story!

I had issues with insomnia in the past as well. What helped tremendously with that is a book called In Touch And In Tune, by Vladimir Levi (http://www.amazon.com/Touch-Tune-Vl...&qid=1412561279&sr=8-1&keywords=vladimir+levi, available for free online at http://en.levi.ru/michelle.php). Levi is a famous Russian psychologist, whose work is read extensively in Russia. I've been meaning to reread this book since my TMS recovery, and see if it ties together with Dr. Sarno's work in any way.

 

wondrous - this chapter of In Touch And In Tune is largely what cured my insomnia: http://levi.ru/guests/guests.php?id_catalog=29&id_position=322. Take a look at the section entitled "Sleep Is Irrelevant: It Is all a Question of Rest".

 

Thank you for the advice, Walt! I'm going on vacation for 2 weeks in November, and when I return, I think I will go ahead and get a cat. I live in a pretty quiet area, and I think I could give it a good life, letting it go outside during the day. I will let you know how it goes! Wondrous's story has given me great confidence!

 

Hi everyone, I'd like to let you know that I did end up getting a sweet little kitten in January. Here is my little guy Rodney, with my daughter:



He had been found in a dumpster just a few hours before we came to visit the shelter, and as soon as I picked him up, he started purring. He is such a sweet and frisky addition to our family.

I had some allergy symptoms here and there at first, but I almost never have them now. Cat allergies are indeed a TMS equivalent!

~Anita

 

I am so glad to hear how well you and your kitty are doing! He sure is handsome. I hadn't thought about it, but when I was 10 we got a cat and I was allergic to her. I became aware of issues with parents around 10-12. Before that I just thougbt we were normal. Since I moved out at 19 I have had cats for 30 years and never a problem. I guess it was TMS!

 

I get 8 hours or more of what I call my sleep time. I will wake up once or twice during the night for a "pit stop,"
and may not be able to fall back to sleep right away. A those times, I practice deep breathing and may count
backwards from 100 to l. I also try not think of worries and tell myself I will think about them in the morning.
I also do not stay in bed once I wake up at my regular time because I would just think and worry.
I tell myself it is going to be a good day, maybe even the best day ever.

I think we benefit from even the time we lay awake. I use it as a time of meditation.

 

Gosh, I am so glad to find this discussion tonight. My allergies have returned and now I can see them as the symptom imperative. Getting ready for vacation and stressing a bit and even though I just finished the three week intensive with
Alan on here, I have found my eyes watering, nose running like mad... after spending time with my dogs and feather pillows.
I am not taking this lying down! No need for extra distractors! I am healthy, I am strong and I am always nervous before I travel.
I am watching my nose stop running as I write this, and the nagging noise in my right lower back is loosening. I swam for six days in a row and my back wants to tell me I am hurt when I AM NOT HURT I just have a very dramatic, somatic ego. And I used a few muscles that were having a brief vacation till now.
Breathe deep! Smile on the exhale, and let go. Symptoms gone! Fast.
Great to see all the animal people where. I don't know what we'd do without two dogs!

Bg

 

Anita, did you ever overcome your cat allergy? I recently overcame mine, which is how I found this thread. I had similar symptoms to others described, going back to around age 5. I hadn't touched a cat in over 30 years, and had the symptoms come on - asthma, wheezing, rash, itching - whenever I was in a place where cats were living. As a child, I spent many hours in doctors offices for breathing treatments, allergy testing, pulmonary function testing, all of it a monument to diagnostic incompetence, as Dr. Sarno would say. I'm a physician myself by the way, trained as a pathologist.

The key for me in eliminating allergies, asthma, and infections, was my mind's need for additional evidence and detailed understanding. My concept is that the mind/brain is in constant communication with the immune system at all times, it knows exactly what is going on immunologically everywhere in the body, moment to moment, at all times. It knows when a "pathogen" is present. It knows when an "allergen" is present. These things are triggers used in a different kind of distraction/defense, having no more basic significance than a herniated disc or something like that. Actually I've developed quite an elaborate understanding about what happens, which fits all the observations from my medical practice as well as my personal experience. Please note that allergic reactions and asthma can indeed be fatal. I have seen people die of them, but that does not exclude the possibility that they can be overcome with profound understanding and awareness, with conventional medicine as a backup.

In addition to what I've said already, current research shows that immunological memories are stored in the brain, specifically the insular cortex. These memories of the immune system are called immunengrams. They represent an entire state of the immune system throughout the body. My experiences inform me that immunological memories can be reactivated by emotional phenomena, by classical conditioning, and like other types of memory, can simply be made up or "confabulated" as the need arises. Research shows that stimulation of insular cortex neurons alone (without irritating the body directly) can reproduce the states of peritonitis and colitis in mice. Likewise, destruction or blocking of those same brain cells greatly reduces or eliminates immune responses even when the animal's body is injected with something that would cause peritonitis and colitis. Here are some scientific papers:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34752731/ (Insular cortex neurons encode and retrieve specific immune responses - PubMed)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-0387-1 (Neuronal regulation of immunity: why, how and where? | Nature Reviews Immunology)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36327893/ (Immunoception: Defining brain-regulated immunity - PubMed)

Focus on the figures. Does understanding any of this help anyone? Please let me know if it does.

 

Hello @clarinetpath and welcome.

This is a reeeally old thread ending in 2017, but you have brought us some extremely interesting information about allergies, which is often a hot topic on this forum. It's pretty technical, but I get the general idea, and I suspect that a number of people might access those authoritative resources, so thanks for those. The full Nature article has limited accessibility, but the two NIH abstracts have links to the full studies plus suggested links to lots of related studies with really interesting titles on this topic. Fortunately the abstracts are short and easy to digest, but I had to stop before going too far down the rabbit hole.

Anyway, I really appreciate the subtle and complex interactions that are involved, which is such an obvious component to the entire experience of the TMS brain mechanism - but so hard to explain! Your explanation is quite helpful.

I've been exploring this in regard to the autoimmune conditions in general, ever since I "came down with" sudden-onset RA in the spring of 2020, thanks to multiple stresses that were in my life during (and also because of) the early weeks of the pandemic. I firmly believe that my immune system responded to the level of stress I was experiencing, and that there is no other cause for me to have RA (at an advanced age and with no family history). Thankfully it is very well managed with a low level of a basic DMARD, which I credit to continuing to apply my TMSknowledge and skills, 12 years after I discovered Dr Sarno.

So Thank You for taking the time to post this. I'm bookmarking it

 

You're most welcome Jan. I've attached the Nature paper. I don't understand many of the experimental or technological details either, but I do know enough about the pathology and biology of what's in the papers to know that this is an important mechanism of the mind's connection/integration with the immune system. Given that the immunological state of what we call "peritonitis" can be stored in the small brain of a mouse, then I would be shocked if, for example, the immunological memory of a "rheumatoid nodule" in the hand were not also stored in the human brain. I still don't know how exactly autoimmune diseases begin, other than the occurrence of great stress like you said.