First Person: Hay fever's advantages are not to be sneezed at
'The hay fever season has got off to a slow start this year, but I am confident it will soon make up for lost time. First the cold spring and now the rains have conspired against the grass pollen which has such an extraordinary capacity to make some of us sneeze, wheeze and water at the eyes.
We hay feverers complain like mad about our plight, but secretly we rather like being in the limelight for a sociable six weeks. We are the one in ten, the watery 'Few', who know no limits of sex, race, religion, age, worldly status, indeed, number of sneezes per minute. Come the middle of July, we are swallowed up again by the immune 90 per cent of the population, opportunities gone for another year.
You can do useful things with a well-timed 'crise de tishoo'; avoid your round of drinks; or wave down a budding Larwood at the crease as he prepares to hurl one at your eyebrows.
The malady can effect the very course of our lives. Take a friend who described how, being the worse for drink, was on the point of proposing (marriage, presumably) to a person of casual acquaintance, when she was took, and the opportunity slipped away for ever.
My high expectation of a good season rests on the fact that last summer the cold and rain likewise conspired against a timely start at the end of May, but then for three days running in late June the count in central London soared into the 200s. A mere 100 is 'high'. (This year's peak so far is a snivelling 72.)
So just in case the weather does change, here are some suggestions for the dissatisfied sufferers. Stay indoors on hot windy afternoons between the hours of five and seven, by which time the pollen has built up into a congestion akin to bodies on the beach at Benidorm. The count could be topping 500. If you must go out, don't walk on the sunny side of the street, whatever the songster recommends. Pollen dislikes shade.
Nor is London, an 'island of concrete in a sea of grass', spared, or so says Roland Davis, aero-biologist, who has been counting pollen on the roof of St Mary's Hospital, Paddington for 30 years. Doc Davis's trusted adviser is a robot which gulps passing air, extracts the pollen and deposits it on a vaseline-coated slide which creeps along at 2mm an hour. Being 48mm long, it provides an hourly record of the pollen grains.
For extreme cases, extreme remedies. Once, while filming RL Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes I sneezed so often and so loud that the donkey refused to carry on. It was a Sunday and the crew down to the props boy were on time-plus-three. The local medicine gave me a steroid jab free, or at least paid for by the Paris bureaucrats, as he put it, and we marked the occasion with a large glass of red. I slept for a day and a half, after which both Modestine and I were able to work together.
Overuse of steroids can bring on muscle-wastage, bone-thinning, hypertension and the cancellation of your Olympic gold medal. They are only safe when applied 'topically', as eye-drops, nose spray or inhaler, and so not absorbed into the body.
Anti-histamine pills bought over the chemist's counter can also lull you to sleep, though one brand does not have a soporific effect on me. Nowadays non-drowse-making anti-histamines are available on prescription but are expensive enough to wreck Norman Fowler's plans for the NHS.
After which we enter the murkier world of medicine. Beware the charlatan, the easy remedy, and especially 'desensitization', designed to stop you reacting to pollen altogether. It has a high failure rate and patients have died from falling into the wrong hands.
For those of us wary of both doctors and drugs, there remains the ultimate remedy, a six-week working holiday in the Sahara. Not for the moment prescribed on the health service.
On the other hand, your hay fever may not be the result of grass pollen at all. If you sneeze persistently from August to May it could be the cat, the dog, the guinea pig, but most likely the house dust mite which resides in human scales. Each time we turn over at night we shed dead skin and the little mites transfer to the mattress. Sensitive readers should halt here . . . the mite's faeces contain allergy-causing proteins, and being the same size as grass pollen, are breathed in and make us wheeze. Since learning about them I've ordered regular vacuuming of my bedding.
Alteril: A safer way to sleep
Napoleon said: “Six hours for a man, eight hours for a woman and 10 for a fool.'' This
Napoleonic lore about sleep is, in one respect, medically unsound: there is no evidence of a correlation between intelligence and sleep. But he was on stronger
ground when he implied that too little sleep has its dangers, as there are statistics which show that those who regularly sleep less than six hours are apt to die younger.
Mrs Thatcher, always prepared to challenge a European viewpoint, is famed for the
little sleep she needs, but most people who sleep as little as she does would start to show the signs of sleep deprivation. The physical indications are obvious; tiredness, drooping eyelids, a slight shake, and the unmistakable but difficult to define facial changes which enable the tactless to say: “You do look tired.''
The emotional symptoms are more subtle: depression, irritability, and a lack of
sensitivity to the feelings of others, coupled with hypersensitivity (almost
paranoia) in the sufferer. Sleep deprivation is particularly undesirable in a
politician, as it is at its most damaging when parliamentary life is most active, in the evenings and into the small hours.
Adults usually need about seven hours a night, and the over-60s about six-and-a-half hours. But in the older age groups daytime cat naps have to be taken into
consideration. As sleep accounts for so much of a person's life, it is not surprising that a third of the population is dissatisfied with its sleep pattern, and that one in seven consider that it is so bad that they suffer from insomnia. It ranks after pain and nausea as the third most common symptom discussed with doctors, who issue 15 million prescriptions a year in the hope of keeping their patients asleep. On average, one night's sleep in every eight is induced by a sleeping pill, and yet all currently available sleeping pills have disadvantages. Tolerance is soon acquired to barbiturates, which are addictive and highly poisonous in over dosage.
The benzodiazepines are much safer, but can also cause dependence. The longer-acting benzodiazepines, such as Mogadon, can impair performance next day, while the shorter acting ones, such as Halcion, can give rise to rebound anxiety the following morning. Last month Zimovane (zopiclore), a new sleeping pill unrelated to any hypnotics available at present, was launched in Britain by Rhone-Poulenc, a company better known to older doctors as May and Baker. Zimovane has been available for three years on the Continent, where it has been used by 30,000 patients. The manufacturers claim that it has advantages over the benzodiazepines. It induces six to eight hours' sleep within half an hour of being taken, has no hangover and is well tolerated by the elderly. http://sleepsilproducciones.com/alteril-the-truth-is-here/ Helps you find out more about the most common sleeping problems that men and women usually face. You can also read the best solutions in fighting off sleeping problems.
The manufacturers say performance next day is unimpaired, so students can take exams without fear that their results will suffer, and those who have to use their
judgement will find it and their wits un-blunted. As yet dependence has not been demonstrated and Zimovane seems safe in over dosage. But even so, like other
sleeping pills it should be prescribed only for a limited period to treat transient insomnia, such as that resulting from travelling or stress. Long-term insomnia may be a symptom of psychiatric disease, manic depression or a severe anxiety state, and needs specific treatment, or a change of lifestyle.
Insomnia as a result of travelling has its own problems. Phineas Fogg went round the world in 80 days and Michael Palin is trying to emulate him. But the era or the
rules prevented both from having to contend with jetlag. It is hoped that Zimovane, by providing a restful sleep, may help defeat jetlag, and to test this theory Rhone-Poulenc will soon send 10 volunteers twice round the world, in 30 days.
You may visit our site http://sleepsilproducciones.com for more intersting facts about sleeping problems and the best way to solve it.
Napoleonic lore about sleep is, in one respect, medically unsound: there is no evidence of a correlation between intelligence and sleep. But he was on stronger
ground when he implied that too little sleep has its dangers, as there are statistics which show that those who regularly sleep less than six hours are apt to die younger.
Mrs Thatcher, always prepared to challenge a European viewpoint, is famed for the
little sleep she needs, but most people who sleep as little as she does would start to show the signs of sleep deprivation. The physical indications are obvious; tiredness, drooping eyelids, a slight shake, and the unmistakable but difficult to define facial changes which enable the tactless to say: “You do look tired.''
The emotional symptoms are more subtle: depression, irritability, and a lack of
sensitivity to the feelings of others, coupled with hypersensitivity (almost
paranoia) in the sufferer. Sleep deprivation is particularly undesirable in a
politician, as it is at its most damaging when parliamentary life is most active, in the evenings and into the small hours.
Adults usually need about seven hours a night, and the over-60s about six-and-a-half hours. But in the older age groups daytime cat naps have to be taken into
consideration. As sleep accounts for so much of a person's life, it is not surprising that a third of the population is dissatisfied with its sleep pattern, and that one in seven consider that it is so bad that they suffer from insomnia. It ranks after pain and nausea as the third most common symptom discussed with doctors, who issue 15 million prescriptions a year in the hope of keeping their patients asleep. On average, one night's sleep in every eight is induced by a sleeping pill, and yet all currently available sleeping pills have disadvantages. Tolerance is soon acquired to barbiturates, which are addictive and highly poisonous in over dosage.
The benzodiazepines are much safer, but can also cause dependence. The longer-acting benzodiazepines, such as Mogadon, can impair performance next day, while the shorter acting ones, such as Halcion, can give rise to rebound anxiety the following morning. Last month Zimovane (zopiclore), a new sleeping pill unrelated to any hypnotics available at present, was launched in Britain by Rhone-Poulenc, a company better known to older doctors as May and Baker. Zimovane has been available for three years on the Continent, where it has been used by 30,000 patients. The manufacturers claim that it has advantages over the benzodiazepines. It induces six to eight hours' sleep within half an hour of being taken, has no hangover and is well tolerated by the elderly. http://sleepsilproducciones.com/alteril-the-truth-is-here/ Helps you find out more about the most common sleeping problems that men and women usually face. You can also read the best solutions in fighting off sleeping problems.
The manufacturers say performance next day is unimpaired, so students can take exams without fear that their results will suffer, and those who have to use their
judgement will find it and their wits un-blunted. As yet dependence has not been demonstrated and Zimovane seems safe in over dosage. But even so, like other
sleeping pills it should be prescribed only for a limited period to treat transient insomnia, such as that resulting from travelling or stress. Long-term insomnia may be a symptom of psychiatric disease, manic depression or a severe anxiety state, and needs specific treatment, or a change of lifestyle.
Insomnia as a result of travelling has its own problems. Phineas Fogg went round the world in 80 days and Michael Palin is trying to emulate him. But the era or the
rules prevented both from having to contend with jetlag. It is hoped that Zimovane, by providing a restful sleep, may help defeat jetlag, and to test this theory Rhone-Poulenc will soon send 10 volunteers twice round the world, in 30 days.
You may visit our site http://sleepsilproducciones.com for more intersting facts about sleeping problems and the best way to solve it.