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Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 11 months agoNo this is about phenylephrine, which is a vasoconstrictor. Allergy meds are a much different category, usually the pills are anti-histamines. The nasal sprays are usually a corticosteroid (there’s different ones too though). Anti-histamines can certainly have side effects though, especially the ones that don’t say non-drowsy, as anyone who’s taken benadryl could tell you.
medgremlin@lemmy.sdf.org 11 months ago
An interesting thing about Benadryl (diphenhydramine): if you look at “PM” meds or things that are supposed to help with sleep, diphenhydramine is usually the active ingredient. Benadryl is a sleep medication that happens to also work as an antihistamine which I find a bit amusing.
mark3748@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Antihistamine drugs are all sleep medications. The non-drowsy versions just don’t cross the blood-brain barrier and cause less drowsiness.
The problem with using antihistamines as sleep meds is that you build a tolerance fairly quickly, so they work well for occasional use but not in the long-term.
Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
That’s a good point and goes for pretty much any “insomnia” medication. None have good evidence for helping in the long term. The only intervention that has good evidence for chronic insomnia isn’t a medication, it’s cognitive behavioral therapy for sleep. Unfortunately that can be difficult and expensive to access, there’s not a ton of psychologists or counselors that do that.
db2@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
Benadryl is an antihistamine that also makes you sleepy. You’ve got it entirely backwards.
Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 11 months ago
Very true! All those pm meds are just branding. Unless you’re also in pain or have a fever and to lazy to take two pills or something, there’s no real benefit. Just a glance at amazon shows the unit price of tylenol pm vs the same dose of generic benadryl (diphenhydramine) is 12x more! There’s multiple meds like this in the over the counter section, always read what the actual active ingredients are, not just the branding. I’m particularly annoyed by all the combination products that wrap tylenol/acetaminophen in them, or an NSAID (ibuprofen, naproxen), as it could be easy to accidentally overdose those if you were also taking them separately or a very similar med.