I've been reading up on Benedryl and found that some people have the opposite reaction to it....Anxiety and panic attacks. I already have an axiety disorder so I better be careful.

Some have said it works great at 50 mg for sleep and others say that dose would have them flying off the walls. It's not unusual for people to have opposite reactions to meds, but I'm glad I found this out.

I may buy the cheap stuff and try it, though, to see if it works for me. Anybody else have this opposite reaction to Benedryl?

yup sally. i learned the hard way.

give lil'monkey any and she is up and running for 24hrs straight. dr said to give it to her after her surgery when she was 5. that was NOT a fun night.

When I was using it about...10 years? ago, to get to sleep. It worked great for me for about 8 or 9 months. Then it started to do the opposite effect. So, I switched to Nyquil Liquicaps (pill form of Nyquil) That worked pretty good for me, there was no alcohol that I know of in it, and because they were pill form, I knew exactly how much I'd taken. (when you're chugging the liquid form, it's hard to tell how much you took)

Then one day in 2001 there was a story on the news about there being an ingredient in Nyquil and some other cold medicines that was raising the chance of stroke happening in women of my age. (I was in my late 20s then)

So, I quit using it that night, after a couple of days I was sleeping "almost" normally. I was occasionally trying other stuff, but I was working for WalMart at that time, and WM managers are slave drivers, so I was not really having that big of a problem sleeping. I'd come home exhausted and heat stroked (they had crappy a/c there and wouldnt let us have a fan in our area)

After I lost my job at WM (they fired as many people as they could after 9-11) I got a job for Hobby Lobby, they werent as big a slave driver as WM, but I was still working hard enough to not have to worry about insomnia much.

I dont think I've had insomnia this bad in at least 8 years. It's certainly lasted longer than any bout of insomnia before.

I'm betting that most of my insomnia problems have stemmed from having MS. I didnt know about the MS till last year, but I can look back and see some signs of it as far back as late 1996, but I think I've had it longer than that...actually possibly since childhood.

I did actually go out shopping with my parents today, and we walked around a bit (with lots of rest breaks for both my parents) so at least I actually moved around a bit today and used up some energy.

I think I'm going to break down tonight and take 1/4 of one of the sedatives that my doctor Rx-ed to me last month. I do stay up so that I can chat with my boyfriend on Skype at night, but I think I'll send him a message saying that I'm going to bed early tonight... Maybe I can reset the internal clock and see if I can sleep as if I'm on Central Time, instead of Greenwich Mean Time.

I can't take benedryl. It effects my anxiety problems more. I am jumping off the walls. Actually the effects make me feel worse after then when I have an anxiety attack.

I take Lorazepam for my attacks. But the dr. has me take just one pill before I go to bed so I can sleep. I have a very bad case of insomia. I also can't have anything with caffeine in it, that sets off the body.

This body is just one big ms puzzle.



Joyce (also known as Jappy )

I'm confused, isn't Benedryl cold medicine, OTC?

Yes, Cindy. Benadryl or dyphenhydramine also used in Unisom was the first OTC antihistamine to be used in this country. We use it when people are having allergic reactions to anything. It's probably one of the quickest acting antihistamines available, although there are many others out there such as Zyrtec; however they are not used as much for immediate allergic reactions as Benadryl is.

Yes. Benadryl is a cold medicine, but it has another use as a sleep aid.

Benadryl (chemical name is "Diphenhydramine") can be found in TylenolPM, Unisom, Nytol, and a lot of the other name brand and store brand OTC sleep aids.

I have a shellfish allergy, it's not too bad, I just get hives from it, and take Benadryl whenever I somehow get my non-seafood meals cross-contaminated with shellfish.

When I ran out of Benadryl one day, my dad handed me a bottle of a storebrand sleep aid that is just Benadryl. Even the pills looked the same except for the color (store brand Benadryl is pink, this OTC sleep aid is baby blue) Since Benadryl no longer seems to make me sleepy, I carry that bottle with me when we go out to eat, just in case someone ignores me when I tell them not to cook my food anywhere near the seafood.

Now that's amazing because I've had a mild allergy to shellfish all my life too! I eat it anyway, it just turns my face and neck pink for a few hours and I feel like I have a fever if I eat a lot.

I am totally ignorant when it comes to pharms. It just doesn't interest me that much— guess no one was asking about that!

I used to be only allergic to shrimp. It would just give me hives. So, I ate the other shellfish that I liked better, clams, lobster (MmmmMMM!!!) and crab.

Then one day, we went out to eat at a local restaurant. They had a special on the lobster (probably a bad sign...) They were selling the lobster dinners for $15 dollars apiece (another bad sign, that was probably ignored) and I had a really tasty meal of lobster and garlic butter. (oh yum! lobster and garlic butter! MmmmmMMMMmmmm!!)

Well, we had been home about 20 minutes when I started to have an allergic reaction (not anaphylaxis) I was going to see my doctor for a cold the next day anyways, and asked about it there. They said to assume that I've got an allergy to lobster.

A year or so later, my dad was making fish sticks. He didnt have enough, so he asked what I prefered, fish sticks or chicken strips. I told him chicken. He cooked both on the same tray in the oven. I only had chicken. But, I had an allergic reaction.

So, since I've had reactions to eating shellfish and other fishies, I consider myself allergic. The weird thing about the allergy is, that most shellfish allergies are not really to the shellfish, it's to the iodine.

Imagine my surprise when I went for a cystoscopy (not sure if that's the right name...I was getting my bladder checked out, and they also did a kidney xray) With the xray, they inject you with a constrast....that has iodine in it. Told them of the shellfish allergy, they said they were ready to deal with that if I had a reaction...and that we'd know for sure about the allergy about 2 seconds after getting the contrast injected.

whaddya know? I didnt have a reaction. So, I dont know if I'm allergic now. So, I'm going to guess that I am allergic, but that it's not to all shellfish. But I'm not about to test the theory. Shellfish is too expensive in most of the restaurants here in Omaha (and I'm suspicious of the quality of it anyways) so I just dont eat it any more at all. Too worried that I'll pick the wrong shellfish and get the big allergic reaction (anaphylaxis)

Cheaper not to eat it anyways.

My parents took me to a restaurant up the street awhile back. It's new, and is considered to be a bit upscale. The menu had a lot of seafood, so I ordered a beef-type of dish. The menu had no mention of seafood in it at all.

We also ordered the chicken soup they had. I asked to make sure it didnt have any seafood in it. The waitress didnt know, so she asked the owner. Owner said no.

So, they bring out the soup first. It tasted pretty good. Then I noticed it tasted like Miso soup. (ut oh!) There was chicken in it, and something that looked suspiciously like a spring roll.

Asked the waitress what it was, again, she was clueless and got the owner. Owner comes out and said "oh. That spring roll" (argh!) What part of "allergic to seafood" did she not understand? I'm starting to itch, took a couple of benadryl. Things were ok.

Then they brought out the entrees. I start eating mine, and began to wonder what the white stuff that was decorating the plate and the meat. Asked again....again clueless waitress asked the owner. She tells me "oh, that roe." I asked, "what's roe?". She tells me that it's something that's sort of like fish eggs. That's when I told my parents to go ahead and finish their dinner, that we'd stop at Burger King on the way home for mine. Popped another Benadryl and sat there getting stoned on antihistamines while waiting for my parents.

Even tho I didnt eat more than a few bites of my dinner, and told them why, they still charged us for my meal. Geeze, try to "possibly" kill me with seafood even tho I told them I couldnt eat seafood before I ordered and had specifically told them not to have any seafood around my food, and then they still wanted me to pay for it.

I posted a review of their restaurant on several restaurant review websites and warned everyone reading it to not eat there if they've got an allergy to seafood. The restaurant will try to kill them with it.

Erin

You and I would be pure entertainment if we were to go out for dinner together! We would drive the waitress and the chefs totally whacky asking them all sorts of questions about the ingredients!

They would probably just ask us to leave! Or rather why would we bother to eat out if we were allergic to so many things! LOL!

Do you carry an epi-pen? I used to but go tired of getting it refilled and not using it! I just pop benadryl like you do and avoid those foods!