The importance of getting enough sleep cannot be overdone. To avoid being awake at 1 a.m. for the third night in a row, you may resort to using whatever’s in your medicine cabinet in an attempt to get some sleep.
In most cases, it is a medicine called Antihistamine with a drowsiness warning on the box. So, just how bad is it? In this article, we’ll go over everything you need to know before taking an antihistamine to sleep.
Diphenhydramine hydrochloride (DPH) is the main active ingredient in that quick-acting antihistamine.
Antihistamine Benadryl contains this compound to treat symptoms like itching, watery eyes, and sneezing caused by an allergic reaction. To be honest, feeling sleepy is just one of the side effects listed on the bottle.
An important function of histamine is to promote wakefulness, as well as the inflammatory response that causes allergy symptoms.
According to Stanford Sleep Medicine Center physician Rafael Johnson, M.D., antihistamines counteract the histamine in your body, making you tired in addition to relieving allergy symptoms.
However, not everyone will be affected by this additive. Professor of pulmonary and sleep medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, David Ramert, M.D., tells SELF that these drugs aren’t very effective sleep aids.
Let’s clear your doubt about is it safe to take an Antihistamine for sleep every night
Table of Contents
Uses of Antihistamine
A wide range of allergic conditions, as well as wakefulness and anxiety, can be treated with these drugs.
As a result, they’ve been used to treat a variety of conditions besides allergies, such as cold symptoms, motion sickness, nausea from other sources, and skin allergies, as well as to make anxious or tense patients sleepy.
First-generation antihistamines are sedating, while non-sedating antihistamines are second-generation antihistamines (second-generation antihistamines).
Although both drugs work by binding to the H1 receptor, the first-generation drugs do so with less selectivity. It is their ability to cross the blood-brain barrier that distinguishes them.
Reason For Not Taking Antihistamine For Sleep Every Night
There are some antihypertensive drugs, tranquilisers, and drugs that block muscarinic and cholinergic receptors in these drugs as well.
As a result, they have no affinity for histamine receptors. Anti-muscarinic, anti-alpha-adrenergic, and anti-serotonin effects are some of their properties.
Blood-brain barrier-crossing sedating antihistamines act on central histamine receptors as well as peripherally located histamine receptors. Histamine is secreted by approximately 64,000 brain neurons. These control a wide range of activities, including:
- Wakefulness
- Memory and learning
- Anti-appetite
- controlling one’s internal temperature
- Regulation of Heart rate and Blood pressure
- Release of stress hormones and endorphins
Antihistamine Side Effects
Because sedating antihistamines interfere with these actions, they cause drowsiness, fatigue, lack of concentration, difficulty learning and remembering new things, poor exam performance, and cognitive and coordination problems with work or driving.
- Histamine shortens REM sleep, so users wake up still feeling tired, inattentive, forgetful, and with poor motor and sensory performance the morning after taking the drug at night.
- These antihistamines can also have side effects by blocking the cholinergic and alpha-adrenergic receptors, such as urinary retention and constipation.
- They can also worsen narrow-angle glaucoma, and even cause death. When taken for more than 5 days, they can cause or worsen dry mouth, increase appetite, and induce tolerance.
- High doses of anticholinergic drugs cause the well-known and life-threatening anticholinergic syndrome, which includes blurred vision, pupillary dilation, dry mouth and skin, flushing, delirium and confusion, and hyperthermia.
- As a result, if the user experiences heart palpitations while taking an over-the-counter antihistamine, the medication should be discontinued.
- The H1-antihistamines, astemizole and terfenadine, can cause dangerous cardiac QT interval prolongation and lead to ventricular myocardial irregularities such as the characteristic “torsades des pointes.”
- Even at low doses, these drugs can cause dizziness, hypotension, and sedation that lasts into the following day. This raises the risk of a senior citizen falling and being injured as a result.
As a result, they are currently illegal to use in the majority of countries. Patients over the age of 65 should exercise caution when taking these medications because they tend to have fewer cholinergic neurons in the brain, fewer cholinergic receptors, and less stable blood-brain barriers.
Also Read: What is Ambien? What Are The Side Effects Of Ambien?
How Long Do Antihistamines Side Effects Last?
Everything that has a side effect remains for a span so does Antihistamines. Elimination half-life can range from 6.7 to 11.7 hours in a healthy adult.
This means that six to twelve hours after taking Benadryl, half of the drug will have been excreted from your system. The drug will be completely eliminated from your system in about two days. Thus, it is advisable for patients to intake Antihistamine under the doctor’s prescription only.