3 Causes of Irritability:
1. Fatigue
If adequate sleep is Beauty, then inadequate and/or poor sleep is surely the Beast. The health consequences of poor sleep aside, restless nights can lead to crankiness the likes of which have rarely been seen. The Solution: Make sure you get not only enough sleep every night; ensure that it’s restful sleep with the right mattress, pillow, lighting (lack thereof) and preparation.
2. Stress
Stress manifests in many ways, but irritability is perhaps the most common symptom. Stressed about your job, the screaming kids, the unpaid bills, your lack of motivation to hit the gym, or any number of other life challenges? Irritability can’t be far behind. The Solution: Manage stress by discussing it, dealing with it proactively and taking control; anything but avoiding it.
3. Hunger
Irritability that comes on like a wave and doesn’t have any other obvious cause (like those above) could be due to hunger. Face facts: People don’t eat often enough, and when they do, it’s high-glycemic foods that rush into your bloodstream and rush right back out, leaving you tired and hungry. The Solution: Eat small, frequent meals high in complex carbs that fuel your whole day.
I would argue that blood sugar imbalances are wrecking our health as a society. If you are hypoglycemic, you know that it can stress you emotionally; little things are all of a sudden very big. If your blood sugar drops at 2 or 3a.m., your body will go into an alarm state and then wake you up. It is my opinion that most people dianosed as bi-polar are simply severely hypoglycemic.
B vitamin intake is crucial for any sort of blood sugar issue. Dr. Royal Lee called Cataplex B (thiamin) the “poor man’s insulin”. Stay far away from high potency B vitamins; as these are almost always synthetic and can do more harm than good. Only take low potency B vitamins. The exception would be vitamins B6 and B12.
