Are Allergies Causing Your Insomnia
If you are having a difficult time sleeping at night, you might be surprised to find out that there are things behind it which you may not realize are going wrong with your body. As a matter of fact, one of the most common things that causes sleep disorders aside from stress is allergies. I’m not really talking about hayfever but what I am talking about are allergies to specific things in the environment around us that we may not even realize we are dealing with.
Having allergic reactions to different foods and things that are in the air can cause a lot more difficulties than just sneezing or a runny nose. As a matter of fact, many of the food allergies that we have go undetected because the only symptoms that they can really cause may show up as insomnia. In order for us to be able to get to the root of the problem that is causing our insomnia, we may need to take a look at some of the things that are in our environment. For example, do you eat wheat on a regular basis? You may be dealing with an allergy to gluten. Do you drink milk regularly? This might be the culprit because many of us are lactose intolerant.
If you really want to cure your insomnia and you think allergies may be to blame, you need to have a systematic way of removing things from your diet and your environment. The first thing that you should do is to keep a record of everything that goes into your body on a daily basis. This not only includes the foods that you eat but it should also include any liquids that you drink as well. Keep a record of any kind of symptoms that may show up in your body, no matter how small. You might be surprised to discover that you have more food allergies than you realized.
Begin getting rid of the things that are causing problems in your body. Although this can be a little bit difficult, especially if we enjoy eating them, getting a good night sleep and curing our insomnia will make any foods that we have to get rid of well worth the effort. You should also make sure that you’re drinking plenty of water every day because this helps to flush any allergens from our system before they have the ability to affect us negatively.
Insomnia has been a featured disorder from many factors such as books and movies. Two cult classics one is a book titled Insomnia written by horror novelist Stephen King and the other is the Robert DeNiro film from 1976 Taxi Driver.
There have been 28 songs written and recorded about insomnia and among the artists who recorded a song were Vanessa Carlton, Green Day, Radiohead, and Tenacious D. The most popular film based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel that was a hit about 6 years ago was Fight Club with Edward Norton and Brad Pitt and the lead character was manic insomniac.
This seems to be the most common form of sleeping disorder to the point that movies and songs were made about this problem.
People aren’t aware that this is a problematic issue for those who suffer from this. It’s not healthy to go without sleep because it can affect your immune system making you prone to catching things like the flu and colds. Not getting any rest can cause severe disorientation because your body wasn’t given an opportunity to rest and recuperate.
This is what drove the designer coffee movement up like the sprawl of coffee shops from Starbucks, Gloria Jeans, Seattle’s Best, and Caribou Coffee since you had a lot of late nighters consisting of mainly people working in hospitals and college students who had to pull all nighters and cram sessions and needed to stay awake so when coffee wasn’t working they bought this over the counter pill called Vivarin which is equal to about 2 cups of coffee when you take the prescribed dosage.
It’s usually not a good idea to take Vivarin because it can interfere with your body’s ability to sleep and rest normally. You’ll find more college students getting sick a lot because they’re forcing their bodies to do things that isn’t normal like staying up super late and not getting at least 6 hours of sleep. Rest also provides your body’s digestive system to rest which makes up about 70% of your immune system so it’s ideal to sleep when necessary and taking short naps also work as a re-energizer to give you a burst of energy that works much better than coffee or caffeine pills.
That can become resistant since a lot of coffee drinkers tend to get very tired after a certain point and that’s due in part to the fact that you build up a resistance after having a few cups of coffee or cans of Coke so meaning it won’t keep you awake it will accelerate the rate of how fast you’ll start to feel sleepy.
So seeing pop culture idolize such a disorder as insomnia is unknown unless the person who wrote the book or penned the song has a problem with it and decided to write or sing about it. The reason for it is unknown, but it’s rather interesting since a song can tell a story and the same of a book, but it’s obviously influenced a slew of songs, a few movies and a series of books where the characters are suffering from some kind of sleeping disorder from mild to severe.
Ways to Fall Asleep; Good Sleep Hygiene
Jan 17, 2010 Sandy McCollum
Medicines for ailments other than sleep can keep you awake. Find a sample list here, along with illnesses that make patients prone to insomnia and some sleep strategies.
Insomnia is a life altering, personality affecting deficit to our bodies that cannot go on for very long before people crash. Sleep is so important that a continuous lack of it can actually shorten one’s expected lifespan, as shown in a recent Harvard study.
Common Causes of Insomnia
Common causes of insomnia include:
* stressful events
* emotional stress
* illness
* temporary pain
* disturbances in sleep hygiene, or environmental factors under one’s control that may contribute to disturbed sleep and insomnia
* disruptions to circadian rhythm or the 24 hour rhythmic regulation of our body processes
Other Chronic Insomnia Causes
Any of the varied kinds of medical reasons can cause sleeplessness, and unfortunately, so can their treatments. It’s tough to say whether the benefit is worse than the side effects, sometimes. Some of the ailments that may use those medicines are as follows:
* arthritis
* diabetes
* menopause
* acid reflux
* headaches
* heart
* disease
* cancer
More Medicinal Causes of Insomnia
Depressive illnesses are often associated with sleep disturbances. These include anxiety, inability to relax, bipolar, panic and other psychiatric disorders. Treatment for these kinds of insomnia is for the underlying medical condition and therefore may not be giving relief of sleep loss in any way. Medicinal treatment may include but not be limited to:
* antidepressants
* antihypertensives
* antiarrhythmics
* antibiotics
* antihistamines
* antivirals
* bronchodilators
* central nervous system stimulants
* corticosteroids
* decongestants
* diuretics
* NSAIDs
Sleeping Problem Broken Into Categories
Treatment for insomnia is broken into two categories; medication and behavioral strategies for sleep initiation.
Read more at Suite101: Insomnia Cures & Causes: Ways to Fall Asleep; Good Sleep Hygiene http://sleep-disorders.suite101.com/article.cfm/insomnia_cures_and_some_common_medicinecaused_s#ixzz0dgVwA00P
