Can allergies affect your mood?
You bet they can!
For a start, they can lead the negative basic emotions such as anger. They can also lead to depression, mood swings, irritability, lack of motivation, frustration, and a general deterioration of emotional health and well-being.
Choose a negative emotion, and there is a good chance that allergies can cause it or make it worse.
In my own experience, insomnia is one allergy symptom, which in itself can can lead to many of the above problems with mood.
The purpose of this article is not so that you can blame your bad mood or social faux paus on your allergies. What I hope might be possible for you is that if you find there is a connection between allergies and your mood, that you will address your allergies and improve your mood.
Copy this code: allergy10. This gives you off EVERY bottle when you order Mood Enhancer right now
Order Link:
“Allergy Blues” Mood Enhancer
Another way of looking at this is that if you do find that your mood chronically needs improving, maybe you should look at allergies and sensitivities as one possible cause.
Knowing the cause may also help you deal with your mood directly. If you discover that your bad moods are caused by eating gluten for example, and you find you have inadvertently eaten some, you can develop the mental capacity to put yourself in a more positive mental outlook (or at least a less negative one) until the symptoms pass.
Since mood and emotions are closely linked, if not a different way of looking at the same thing, it stands to reason that your emotional balance can be severely affected by allergic symptoms.
Allergies and Decision Making
Since mood can affect your judgment and ability to make decisions, allergy symptoms can cause poor decision making, or indecisiveness.
When I feel under the weather, I put off all important decisions if at all possible. This is not procrastination. It is a strategy that allows me to recover to a state where I can make sound decisions. I recommend this to anyone, no matter what the cause of your bad mood.
How do allergies affect your mood? Please leave a comment! You could also explain what you do to improve your mood – that would be really helpful for other readers.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I am the mother of a food allergic child. She under goes a food allergy test every 6 months to see if she has “outgrown” some of her food allergies. About two weeks ago she under went the testing. The doctor informed us that she tested negative to wheat, milk and soy…YEAH…and that we could try to reintroduce them into her diet. While she loved the access to all the new foods, I immediately noticed a change in her personality. She became VERY moody, aggressive and emotional. She would cry at the drop of a hat. While she is only 2-1/2 years old…this was a total change from her normal behavior. I’ve also noticed that she is much more tired and has been sleeping more. I’ve seen this happen in the past and have always discontinued the suspected foods. This is the first time that we’ve allowed the exposure to the foods to continue. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking on my part that maybe she would adjust and we could continue with the new “easy” lifestyle. Today was the day to end all days. I think she spent more time fighting with her brother and crying than she did being happy. This is just not acceptable. I don’t care what modern medicine tells me. I have a mother’s intuition. I know that she is still sensative to wheat no matter what the tests say. We are going to go back to her wheat/milk/soy/potato free diet. While I wish life could be as easy as ordering dinner at the driver through rather than making EVERYTHING from scratch, it’s just not worth her happiness and health…not to mention the happiness of the family as a whole. I hope that with time she will be able to tolerate the foods, but for now we’ll get along without them like we have been since she was 6 weeks old.
Hi Niclole,
Your “mother’s intuition” is a lot more scientific than “modern medicine” tests.
What your doctor didn’t tell you is that allergy tests are not 100% accurate. They tend not to show a reaction to foods that have been cut from the diet, no matter how allergic you are to those foods.
You’ve done the ultimate test – re-introduced the foods, only to find that they do not agree with your daughter.
Believe that ultimate test every time.
Use allergy tests as a guide for what to cut out, but not what to re-introduce.
Actually, I’d suggest you wait years, not months, before re-introducing foods. Let your daughter grow up and maybe grow out of her allergies.
Mean while, I suggest you get a second opinion from another doctor on the whole approach your current doctor is taking.
Hope that helps.