Peacefully sleeping, I slumbered in my bed, visions of sugarplums dancing in my head. All of a sudden, I awoke, absolutely terrified. My heart was pounding, my sweat glands were working overtime, and I couldn’t explain to myself the overwhelming feeling of fear that was consuming me. It took me several minutes to calm down, and even more time to fall back asleep. I didn’t know what had happened to me and I was scared.
The next night, it happened again, although this time it was even more scary. What if I did this forever? Would I be doomed to never again sleep the night through? Then I started to think a little more rationally, and my thought process went something like this:
My heart was racing. When your heart races, it’s usually because some sort of poison has entered your blood stream and your heart is trying to push it out faster. I must have eaten something that I’m allergic to.
I went back through the last couple of days to analyze anything I had eaten that was unusual. Ah – blueberry pancake syrup. On my last trip to the store, I picked up a bottle of blueberry pancake syrup. It was delicious and I’d eaten it two days in a row, and two days in a row, I’d had these night terrors. Grabbing the bottle, I read the label. The only unfamiliar ingredient was sorbitol.
Wikipedia defines sorbitol as “a sugar alcohol the body metabolises slowly. It is obtained by reduction of glucose changing the aldehyde group to an additional hydroxyl group hence the name sugar alcohol.”
In reading the article further, we find: “Sorbitol is used in various cough syrups, and is usually listed under the inactive ingredients. There is a growing opinion within the medical community that it should be listed as an active ingredient, because too much Sorbitol (about 50g or more for adults) can cause severe gastro-intestinal problems.” And later on: “Sorbitol is poorly digested by the body. Too much sorbitol in cells can cause damage.”
No wonder I’d had that type of reaction – I also feel that way if I eat any form of alcohol at all, even the stuff they make chocolate mousse out of.
I’ve experimented with smaller amounts of sorbitol from time to time ever since, wanting to test out my theory. Sorbitol is a common ingredient in chewing gum, and I find that if I chew too much gum, I start to feel jittery. A larger amount will make me feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin. I’ve never dared to eat as much as I did in the pancake syrup; I don’t ever want to feel that way again. But even the tiniest bit of sorbitol makes me feel restless, sometimes giving me the symptoms traditionally associated with restless leg syndrome. You can bet I’m a label-reader.
If any of these symptoms sound familiar to you, you might try eliminating all sorbitol from your diet for a few weeks to see if it makes a difference. I’m a big believer that the foods we eat influence how we feel, and I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not feel uncontrollably terrified.
Tristi Pinkston is a Media Reviewer and a Movie Reviewer here at Families.com. Click here to read more of her blogs.
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The Bedtime Jitters: Dealing with Restless Leg Syndrome