What if asthma wasn’t just a condition of the lungs, but also influenced by the stress we carry in our relationships? Research suggests that the way we connect with others might affect more than just our emotions - it could impact our breathing too.

Asthma is a condition where the airways in the lungs are restricted, caused by the muscles tightening around them. These airways, called bronchioles, can also become inflamed and swollen, making it even harder to breathe for the person experiencing it.

Asthma is actually one of the conditions that are widely recognized as being psychosomatic, a result of the mind-body connection. That doesn't mean asthma is caused only by psychological reasons, but it's clearly connected to certain types of stress.

In this newsletter we'll look at the the link between asthma and interpersonal relationships.

To explore this connection, a study published in 1985 looked at the breathing patterns of children with and without asthma. During the experiment, the children would listen to a recording of their mothers voice, and later, a recording of a strange woman's voice.

You might think that the mother's voice would have a calming effect, but for children with asthma, it made their breathing more irregular. This suggests that the parent-child relationship might be causing stress to the child.

​Research has also found that children with asthma are more likely to engage in conflict and negative interactions with both parents. This can be extremely stressful for children.

Unhealthy parent-child relationships can actually decrease the expression of genes that help the body fight inflammation, increasing the risk of disease for the child.

To better understand how relationships affect children's health through stress, researchers started looking at family dynamics.

Dr. Salvador Minuchin has studied childhood illness for years. Together with a team of researchers, he has looked at how family dynamics affect childrens health.

In their research they look at families as systems, meaning that the behavior of each member must be considered in the context of the whole family.

They found four dynamics that are common in families with an asthmatic child (or other psychosomatic disorders):

• Enmeshment: Over-involvement in each other’s lives, leading to blurred personal boundaries.

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• Overprotectiveness: Excessive caretaking, often driven by anxiety, where health becomes the central focus of family conversations.

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• Rigidity: Difficulty adapting to change, such as when a child grows into adolescence, creating tension around shifts in roles and expectations.

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• Lack of Conflict Resolution: Avoiding necessary discussions, allowing underlying tensions to linger without resolution.

In short, these dynamics can create a family environment where unspoken conflicts generate chronic stress. Illness may unintentionally become a focal point, helping the family maintain emotional stability by diverting attention away from deeper tensions.

Minuchin suggests that "… the ill child plays an important role in the family conflict avoidance, and that this is an important source of reinforcement for his symptoms."

In other words, the child's sickness may be unconsciously reinforced, because without it the family system would struggle to maintain stability. In such cases, symptoms may start to surface when there's tension in the room.

This can potentially serve as an unconscious coping mechanism that distracts the family from the conflict that's about to happen. The family puts their attention on the child and the conflict is repressed once more.

The researchers also looked at how these dynamics work in practice, but that's beyond the scope of this newsletter.

The important thing to note is how the child is stressed in multiple ways:

1. Stress from the illness itself
2. Stress from the constant underlying conflicts in the family
3. Stress from the unconscious responsibility of helping to maintain stability

These stressors affect the child's immune system and hormonal systems, which in turn reduce the body's ability to heal. More on these mechanisms in future newsletters.

Understanding asthma through this lens isn’t about assigning blame - it’s about recognizing how deeply intertwined our relationships and health can be.

By addressing both emotional and physical environments, we open up new possibilities for healing and resilience.