Does Seasonal Sneezing Lower Your Mood?
April 14th, 2011
Researchers at the University of Maryland discovered a link between seasonal allergies and depression. Allergies can cause a host of symptoms, including sleeplessness, which lower a person’s feeling of wellbeing. In addition, allergies are known to cause the release of cytokines, which may be responsible for lowering the release of serotonin, a hormone that creates a feeling of wellbeing. In addition, many allergy medications have been proven to increase anxiety and mood issues. These findings, discussed in recent article, may help researchers better understand the reason why the number of suicides climbs every spring.
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Well I know that my allergies make me sneezy and itchy and feel pretty rotten, but never in a depressed kind of way. I cannot even relate to that.
I think we are yet to fully understand how much the weather can have an effect on a person’s mood and overall well-being. When there’s snow outside and everything’s shut off I tend to feel depressed and just feel like flying off to some warmer place.
There’s more to life than something that is not under our control. Rather than letting the kind of weather distaste terms we need to learn to be happy with whatever’s available by diverting our energies.
Good grief! I guess if you try hard enough you can come up with a cause and effect relationship between any two things but this verges on the ridiculous. Actually I think that it feeds into hypochondriacs becoming even more so!
I feel miserable when I’m on allergies or on allergy pills, but not depressed. Allergies make my eyes puff up and the allergy pills make it impossible to stay awake. I doubt that allergies can be linked to suicides in any meaningful way.
Anyone with allergies has easy access to pills to keep the symptoms away from any pharmacy. If they are so seriously depressed as to be suicidal, why wouldn’t they be trying to do something about it? Unless they were one of those stubborn types who refuse help no matter what.
@nadine-who says they weren’t? Who says they hadn’t tried everything and not had any relief? Not every medication works in every case. How do you know that it wasn’t the lack of success with the meds, rather than a lack of effort, that drove them to it? You don’t know. And neither do I. But at least I’m not flippant about what they may or may not have done. Whatever the reason, they were going through their own personal hell. God bless them.
Don’t be so judgmental Nadine! The severity of allergies can range from a little stuffy nose to a life threatening condition. If you’re allergic to wasp stings, and we all know wasps are everywhere in spring and summer, it could kill you to get stung. Of course that would be depressing having to constantly live with that fear. If you had other worries on top of your allergies, feeling miserable and anxious could be enough to push you over the edge.
Do researchers involved in such studies have access to the medical records of suicide cases? If they did, it wouldn’t be difficult to see if the person suffered from allergies and if their suicide corresponded with when they usually experienced a seasonal flare up.
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