Allergy meds and insomnia

Anyone having insomnia after taking Claritin-D (loratadine and pseudoephedrine) at bedtime ?

Pseudoephedrine is a stimulant to some people. Try an antihistamine without a decongestant. That has helped me.

I was surprised how easy it was to get weaned off pseudoephedrine.
Apparently it was not doing anything my body couldn't do if I let it.

The non sedating antihistamines can cause insomnia.

Here are the side effects of Claritin (Loratadine):
Loratadine may cause side effects. Tell your doctor if any of these symptoms are severe or do not go away:

headache
dry mouth
nosebleed
sore throat
mouth sores
difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
nervousness
weakness
stomach pain
diarrhea
red or itchy eyes

I have found that I personally need to take my allergy meds in the morning because of this. I also switched to Zyrtec as it does not cause as much problems for me in this area.

Anything with pseudoephedrine will "speed" me up quite a lot. Phenylephrine too, but not quite as much for me, about 1/3rd as "speeding". I was told, since I have high blood pressure, to most certainly avoid the first one and probably should avoid the 2nd as well.

All of them affect my sleep. Even the ones that make you sleepy, yes they make me sleepy, but I don't sleep deeply, I doze, wake up , doze, wake up ... all night.

I am taking benedryl just before bed for the last few weeks to reduce the tickle in my throat caused by asthmatic sinusitis and then I have been deliberately sleeping 7-9 hours to try and break this cycle. I am happy to report it is gradually working. I was taking a pseudophed also when it was worst but its nearly gone. I am still sleeping propped up but am gradually getting back to a real prone position. This started for me right after Thanksgiving and is finally starting to go away.

P.S. I usually use my albuterol inhaler just before sleep also, it seems to help some.

Mr Bill wrote:I am taking benedryl just before bed

I take 50 mg of Benadryl (diphenhydramine) each night and one cup of Tulsi tea (not an allergy medication) at night before bed. It's a part of my baselining as I begin to figure out this beast sleep apnea better. I read that your body adapts to Benadryl quite quickly and it has less effect over a very short time (nights). The Tulsi tea (Ocimum tenuiflorum) is an East Indian herb that is a relaxer / stress reducer and is off topic in this thread, but you can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocimum_tenuiflorum

I used to take the Claritin D and seemed like the first pill always pumped me up...because of high bp my doc only wanted me to take a 5 day regime. Like Retro, I switched to zyrtec and same as him, I don't notice the same symptoms with it and it seems to work better for some reason. I do, however try to take it in the mornings, mainly because my allergy symptoms trouble me more during the day than at night...cpap keeps me clear thankfully!

derek70 wrote:Anyone having insomnia after taking Claritin-D (loratadine and pseudoephedrine) at bedtime ?

My sleep Dr started me on CPAP the first of the year and also started me on Allegra-D and Flonase. Sine this is all new to me and not sure when the benefits of CPAP are supposed to kick in, I'm not sure if it's keeping me up, or I'm just sleeping the same way I always have. The last time I saw him he was going to switch me to regular Alegra, as he noted (3 weeks later) that I have high BP and high resting heart rate.

Anyone else taking flonase too?

Scott<-

I take only loratadine daily in the morning at breakfast and
never have insomnia issues as I'm usually asleep within 15
-20 minutes of hitting the sack.