The unfriendly bedtime
Posted on | October 22, 2011 | No Comments
The doctors called me a case of bad-protoplasm. Not to my face of course, although it was true. Some scoliosis, bad joints, tight ligaments, pigeon-toed… nothing in my body seemed to line up quite right and my immune system must have taken it personally. Hay-fever allergies? Check. Pollen? Check. Cats? Check. Dogs? No, for some reason. Allergic to my own bed? Yes—or rather I would be if I ever touched it before. But, thanks to a few hypoallergenic mattress covers this last little nail in the coffin of my health and well-being slipped when fate went to pound it in. No more dust mites, no more dandruff, or mold. And it definitely makes a difference.
What happened is that my over-active immune system was likely dosed with enough of dust mite waste products when I was little that my body recognized them as something dangerous that needed to be fought off. This will never happen unfortunately. Dust mites are completely harmless little Arachnea that feast on shed human skin cells and multiply into the millions on skin-rich surfaces like your bed or your pillow.
But again, they are completely harmless and microscopically small. But however small they do produce tiny deposits of particular waste (blame your own skin for that) which the body can overreact too. It’s like hay fever or spring allergies every time you lay down on that pillow and bed.
The best solution? Probably expensive therapy to overwhelm the allergies. Next best? A hypo-allergenic mattress in which the buggers can’t survive. Best solution for those of us on an artist’s budget? A zippered mattress pad that you can wash every few days, removing you from your allergen and making nighttime an occasion for the peace and rest that we all (especially those of us with bad protoplasm) need.
