How Sleep Patterns Influence Allergy Severity

How Sleep Patterns Influence Allergy Severity

Allergy season is ramping up. You’ve noticed you feel horrible at night, and the impact on your sleep leaves you feeling lousy in the morning, too. 

Sleep and allergies are a frustrating cycle that you might not realize is connected. Allergies may be triggered by pollen or other allergens, but a lack of sleep also affects how they impact you. 

A well-functioning immune system is essential for staying healthy, but aging, annoying allergy symptoms, and poor bedtime routines make it hard to get enough sleep. 

When you’re tired, your allergies may get worse, and clogged sinuses can make it difficult to breathe, which keeps you from sleeping well. This creates a never-ending cycle that you want to break but don’t know how. Premium Allergy & Respiratory Center can help.

Allergies Often Worsen at Night

After your morning shower, you started to feel like you could function. You’ve been able to breathe, and the sneezing and watery, itchy eyes have diminished. Dinner’s done, dishes are washed, and you’ve completed other nightly chores.

It’s almost time for bed, and those pesky symptoms are creeping back. The minute you lie down, your head stuffs up, your eyes drive you crazy, and you can’t take it. You don’t know how you’re going to sleep when you feel like this.

Why do allergies always seem to flare up during the night? A few things happen.

1. Cortisol Levels Decline

The human body is conditioned to follow the circadian rhythm. That 24-hour internal clock controls the release of the stress hormone known as cortisol. Cortisol regulates glucose availability and plays a role in inflammation. It helps reduce swelling in the nasal passages. 

After a full night’s sleep, your cortisol levels are at their peak. They’ve replenished while you sleep. A healthy adult produces 8 to 30 mg of cortisol daily, with most of that production occurring in the last few hours of sleep. By the time you go to bed, your levels are at their lowest, so cortisol isn’t helping reduce inflammation as much as it did when you woke up.

2. You Lose Help From Gravity

When you’re awake and active, you stand or sit up, and gravity helps your mucus drain from the sinus cavities. Once you lie down, mucus doesn’t drain as easily. You end up feeling the congestion.

3. Bedroom Dust Levels Are High

Pillows, mattresses, and bedding accumulate dust from your dead skin cells, pollen, mold spores, and pet dander. This attracts dust mites. You’re lying down on the microscopic critters that trigger allergies in many people.

4. Pollen Settles at Night

Air currents carry pollen during the day. At night, the air cools down and pollen settles back to the ground. Since it stays near ground level, it’s going to affect you more, especially if you like to sleep with a window open and a window fan running.

Why Your Immune System Needs You to Sleep

As you sleep, your body takes over and works an invisible third shift you don’t realize is happening. During those hours, your body produces and distributes small proteins known as cytokines. 

Think of cytokines as helpers that:

• Aid with sleeping
• Fight infections
• Ease inflammation

When you don’t sleep enough, cytokine production declines. Your immune system is less effective at fighting off a viral or bacterial infection. It also has a harder time identifying germs. The next time your immune system encounters a germ it ‘met” while you were sleep deprived, the less likely it is to remember how to respond. Sleep improves your immune system’s defense.

How a Lousy Night’s Sleep Heightens Your Allergy Symptoms 

You’ve tossed and turned all night. Because you’re sleep deprived, your immune system isn’t at the top of its game. It’s going to overreact or not react well to things it meets. This means the inflammatory response triggered by pollen spores will be exaggerated. 

Plus, you’re tired. It’s hard to remain rational when you feel exhausted. It can lead you to experience symptoms to a greater extent than you usually would. We have a few tips for getting more sleep.

1. Talk to a Doctor About Medication Side Effects

Older adults are more likely to take one or more prescription medications—many list insomnia as a side effect. If you’re on a medication that causes insomnia or restlessness, talk to your doctor about alternatives that are less likely to keep you awake.

Allergy medications can also cause problems with sleep. You might not sleep well because of severe allergy symptoms, so you take allergy medicine to relieve them. However, that might not help you sleep as much as you expect. 

Some decongestants, like Sudafed, list insomnia as a possible side effect. You might fall asleep, but they’re more likely to wake you up at night and make it hard to fall back asleep. Antihistamines like Benadryl cause drowsiness, but some people experience the opposite. They find that it stimulates them and makes it hard to sleep.

If you must use an allergy medication, choose a non-drowsy formula, carefully read the side effects, and watch for insomnia or restlessness. Talk to a California allergy specialist for better options to ease your symptoms without leading to a sleepless night.

2. Create an Allergy-Free Bedroom

Close your window and run an air purifier while you sleep. Choose one that’s suited to your bedroom’s square footage and uses HEPA filtration to capture microscopic pollen and dust particles. 

Invest in allergen-proof covers for your pillows and mattress. Wash your sheets, blankets, and pillow/mattress covers in hot water every week. Dry them fully in the dryer. Don’t hang them outside to dry, as they’ll capture airborne pollen. If they’re not fully dry, mold may grow. Always make sure everything is dry.

If you have carpeting, steam clean it each year to remove trapped dust and pollen. If you can, switch to hardwood flooring that’s easy to mop clean. 

Avoid curtains unless you plan to wash them regularly. Instead, install wooden blinds that you can wipe clean each week.

3. Establish a Bedtime Routine

You need a bedtime routine that doesn’t change much. Pick a time to go to your bedroom and start to settle in for the night. You could shower or take a bath first to remove any pollen or allergens your skin and hair have collected all day.

Close the blinds so outside light doesn’t keep you awake. If you have any devices in your room with LED lights, use stickers or Post-it notes to block that light.

Bright lights, like those from a TV screen, stimulate your brain, making it harder to fall asleep early. Instead, read a book for an hour and then turn off your bedside lamp. If you have an e-reader with e-ink, use dark mode and let the backlight illuminate the screen while you read.

Use your air purifier for white noise, or get a white-noise player that drowns out animal and traffic noise. 

4. Visit Fresno’s Allergy Specialist

Instead of relying on over-the-counter allergy medicines, consult an allergist about immunotherapy. Allergy shots or sublingual drops/dissolvable tablets help your immune system learn how to respond to allergens correctly, which reduces the symptoms that keep you awake at night. 

Make an appointment to talk to Dr. Sabry about your allergies. With medical allergy tests completed at Premium Allergy & Respiratory Center, you’ll work on allergy treatments that work well at easing or stopping your symptoms. Once you’re comfortable, falling and staying asleep all night comes easier.