How Allergies Affect Sleep and How to Fix It
The Real Science of Sport Podcast
Introduction
Learn about the dangers of sleeping in an environment filled with allergen particles, particularly house dust mites. Find out how these mites live in mattresses, feed on human skin, and trigger allergic reactions.
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Speaker 2
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Speaker 4
And locking your sleep
Speaker 2
potential brought to you by cleanmybed.com. So, welcome to our fifth episode in this series on sleep and sleep health and the science of sleep. And as usual, as we introduced first on our first podcast, I'm here with Dr. Joel Warner, who has a BSc in immunology and physiology and a PhD in energy from the University of London, has worked for the National Heart and Lung Institute at the Brampton Hospital in London, the University of Southampton and Imperial College in London, and is currently a professor in pediatrics at the University of Cape Town and has published over 100 peer reviews. And along with us today, we've got a guest and I can't say it's the husband as well. I think we can say that. You can imagine this household is very healthy when it comes to allergies, but Professor John Warner, Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics at Imperial College in London and also the honorary professor at the University of Cape Town. Welcome to both of you. Now, this is obviously one of the key subjects when it comes to sleep, allergies and how they affect our day-to-day living. So, let's just kick off with a kind of a broad look at how allergies affect sleep. I mean, why do they affect sleep? Why can't you just sleep through an allergy?
Speaker 1
Well, when you think about it, Mike, you are sleeping in an environment that is absolutely full of the particles that actually cause the allergy. So getting into a bed is one of the most dangerous things you can do if your analogy sufferer. Do you know that as far as house test mites are concerned, which are the major trigger of allergies and asthma in children, you can have up to 2 million of them living in your mattress at any one time. And house test mites are delightful creatures.
Speaker 2
Well, they're going to say, what
Speaker 1
are they? Yeah, they are actually related to spiders and they like to live in an environment very much the same as we do. If they could choose, they would live at around 25 degrees C, around 80% humidity, because they're little creatures that don't drink, they absorb water through their skin. And they are absolutely delightful. Their favorite food is human skin scales. And you know, we shared about a couple of grams of skin scales into our bed every single night. So these little mites are sitting there in our mattress, eating our skin scales, absorbing any sweat that's coming from our bodies into our mattresses and absolutely loving the heat that the bodies create while they're in the bed. And then of course, house test mites have to have an excretion as well. So their fecal particles, their poo, is exactly what we are breathing in when we jump around in our beds. They come up into the air and we breathe them in. And it is those that people are actually allergic to.
Speaker 2
So it's actually not the death mite, it's the people of the death mite itself. It's the components of the poo that people are
Speaker 1
breathing in that get into their airways and actually cause the allergic reactions.
Speaker 2
So what is in that excrement of those things that causes that sort of allergic reaction? In other words, is everybody allergic to dust mites or some of us not?
Speaker 1
No, it's a particular protein that is excreted by the house test mite. And people can be allergic to different proteins in the fecal particles. There are various of them. But there is one very important one that the majority of people will be allergic to. If people are interested in the actual name of the house test mite, the one that I've worked with the most is called a dematter fagoidys terenissinous. No, it doesn't be the same. It sounds like a dinosaur doesn't it? It's a tiny dinosaur. But its allergen is called derp1. And this is the protein in the poo from the house test mites that gets into the airways and causes the allergic
Speaker 3
reactions.
Join host Mike Finch, Dr Jill Warner and Emeritus Professor John Warner to break down the effect allergies have on sleep quality. The panel discuss the various allergens affecting sleep - from dust mites in your bed to cat dander - and how best to deal with them.
- Dr Jill Warner has a BSc in Immunology and Physiology and a PhD in Allergy from the University of London. She is currently an Honorary Professor in Paediatrics at The University of Cape Town and her research interests are in the foetal origins of allergic disease and environmental allergen avoidance. Dr Jill Warner has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers and journal articles in the field of allergy.
- Prof. John Warner is a Professor of Paediatrics at Imperial College London and the University of Cape Town. His research has focused on the early life origins of asthma and related allergic and respiratory disorders. He has published over 400 papers in scientific journals on these topics. He was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Pediatric Allergy and Immunology from 1997-2010 and chairman of the paediatric section of the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology for 5 years until 2010. He is also a member of the Speciality and Training Committee of the World Allergy Organisation and a past Trustee of the charity known as The Anaphylaxis Campaign. He was a member of the Advisory Committee for Novel Foods and Processes of the Food Standards Agency for 12 years until 2012 and was recognised for his work in food allergy research by the award of an OBE in 2013.
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