It’s embarrassing to keep blowing your nose in front of your seniors or to keep sneezing in a social gathering. Many people get affected by seasonal allergies and experience irrational irritation (they snap at colleagues and friends!) and often feel inexplicably morose.Studies are now revealing that allergies have a direct correlation to your moods and energy levels. They affect our concentration, our ability to take decisions, our productivity and even our sexual urges.
Seasonal allergic rhinitis or hay fever is caused by your body’s reaction to allergens, such as pollen from trees, flowers or weeds, animal dander or dust mites. Your immune system feels threatened by the allergen, identifying it as a foreign agent. This triggers a host of defense reactions, the most common of which is a blocked nose (your nasal passages swell).
Sleepless in Summer
Nasal congestion makes it difficult for you to have a peaceful night’s rest. Air, that is breathed in through the nose is warm and moist. When you breathe with your mouth, your throat feels parched your lips and mouth feel dry, not a very comfortable state to induce sleep!
To add to your woes, you find yourself waking up in fits and starts, woken up by your own snoring!
The reverse – a runny nose – is as bad. The mucous secretions drip backwards, from your nose into your throat (yuk!) irritating your throat, causing you to cough and continuously clear your throat, all through the night.
It goes without saying that consecutive night of sleeplessness saps you of energy, leaving you feeling wooly headed and making it difficult for you to be attentive during the day.
Food Allergy Linked to Insomnia
Do you keep reading late into the night and find yourself tossing and turning before you can unwind and finally fall asleep? You might want to get yourself tested for food allergy. Or, simply pay attention to what you’ve eaten during the course of the day and try to eliminate each item by turn. This will enable you to find out which food type you are allergic to.
Food allergies have been known to excite the nervous system, preventing you from unwinding and relaxing at night. It could also cause you respiratory distress, making it difficult for you to breathe at night. This is another reason for you to feel tired and low the next day.
Some people complain about waking up feeling tired. This feeling of being sapped of all energy continues throughout the day. In such cases your body is finding it difficult to absorb the food you are eating. Get a “delayed food allergy” test done to eliminate the food you are allergic to.
Food allergy or more specifically allergy to cow’s milk is the reason behind infant insomnia. So if your baby stays awake all night, you might want to get an allergy test done.
Pollen Triggers Depression
Here’s something scary! It’s been found that an increase in pollen (which is typical of spring and summer seasons) has a corresponding increase in suicide rates! One would have thought the blooming of flowers, the bright sunshine and the green grass would banish winter blues!
Not so! Pollen triggers a certain chemical reaction in the brain – pro-inflammatory cytokines, that makes you feel lethargic and sleepy; it makes you eat less, have less sex and turns you into a bear with a sore head, grumpy, unsocial and irritable!
Pro-inflammatory cytokines directly affects the central nervous system, releasing a chemical in the brain called IL-1 beta that induces weakness, lethargy, depression and makes it difficult for you to concentrate.
You might wonder – but surely none of the above are traumatic enough reasons to trigger suicidal thoughts! You are right. It is only the clinically depressed who are also susceptible to seasonal allergy, who feel pushed to the edge of the abyss, as it were, during peak pollen season. Signs of clinical depression include hopelessness, helplessness, excessive guilt, and worthlessness.
So if you are not the picture of happiness this spring, if your friends and colleagues grumble “where has all your enthusiasm disappeared?” you know whom or what to blame!