sleeping pills

Are Sleeping Pills Boosting Your Risk for Falls and Fractures?

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(Billion Photos/Shutterstock)

(Billion Photos/Shutterstock)

Sleep is at a premium these days. The stress and anxiety of the holidays can make it tough to get a good night’s sleep. Toss a pandemic into the mix, and quality sleep becomes even more elusive.

Sleeping pills, also called “z-drugs,” can be an attractive option for those struggling with sleep. But they are not without risk. New research suggests high dose z-pills may increase the risk of falls or fractures in people with dementia.

The study appeared in BMC Medicine and looked at data on more than 27,000 patients in England diagnosed with dementia between 2000 and 2016. More than 3,500 were prescribed z-drugs.

Researcher Chris Fox from the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Medical School said up to 90 percent of people with dementia suffer sleep disturbances that can substantially impact physical and mental health.

Using high dose sleeping pills, however, might not be the safest way to treat it.

Of the patients who took z-drugs, 17 percent were given high doses (a high dose is 7.5 mg of zopiclone or an excess of 5 mg of Ativan).

Instead, finding other ways to address sleeping trouble might be in order. If you’re helping to care for someone with dementia, there are some other measures you could employ.

Improving sleep hygiene might be one way to help. Setting the mood for bed about an hour or two before the head goes down can help. This can include darkening the lights, turning off screens, or encouraging a low-stimulus activity.

Paying attention to caffeine and alcohol intake is also essential.

Getting some exercise during the day can also help, as can spending some time to ease nerves through relaxing conversation or mindfulness meditation.

If sleeping pills are still required, talk to the doctor about a lower dose. The study did not find an increased risk for falls and fractures in patients who were not taking high-dose sleeping pills.

Anti-anxiety drugs, sleeping pills proven to kill thousands of American each year.

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People who take prescription drugs for anxiety or to induce sleep are significantly more prone to early death than others, suggests a new study recently published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). A team of researchers from the U.K. found that taking anti-anxiety medications like Valium (diazepam) and Xanax (alprazolam), or sleeping drugs like Ambien (zolpidem), are more than twice as likely as others to die as a result of the medications.

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For their research, the team from the University of Warwick, Keele University and St. George’s Hospital compiled data on more than 100,000 individuals, roughly one-third of whom had filled prescriptions for one or more of the aforementioned drugs, or for other kinds of sleeping medications like Sonata (zaleplon) and Lunesta (eszopiclone). Nearly 70,000 controls who did not take the drugs, but were of similar age and practice, were also included for comparison.

After accounting for a wide variety of influencing factors like alcohol use, socioeconomic status, age and various other health and behavioral characteristics, the team observed specific dose-response associations between each class of drug and likelihood of early death. Based on the data, taking such drugs caused four excess deaths per every 100 participants; non-drugged individuals experienced fewer deaths.

“In this large cohort of patients attending UK primary care, anxiolytic [anxiety] and hypnotic drugs were associated with significantly increased risk of mortality over a seven year period, after adjusting for a range of potential confounders,” wrote the authors in their conclusion.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Scott Weich, told The New York Times (NYT) that, though imperfect, his study reiterates the extreme dangers associated with anti-anxiety and sleep-inducing drugs. A professor of psychiatry at the University of Warwick, Dr. Weich says he has prescribed many of these drugs to his patients in the past, and their dangers are impossible to overlook.

“[This research] adds to an accumulating body of evidence that these drugs are dangerous,” he is quoted as saying. “I prescribe these drugs, and they are difficult to come off. The less time you spend on them the better.”

Cannabis: the safe, effective alternative to mood pills and sleep drugs

For many people, the natural compounds found in cannabis, including the plant’s wide range of cannabinoids — cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) are among the most well known — are far more effective at alleviating stress and anxiety, as well as promoting restful sleep. And unlike pharmaceuticals, cannabis is not dangerous and does not harm the body.

A 1986 study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, for instance, found that cannabis, which is often referred to as marijuana, produces clear anti-anxiety effects in the body. Compared to controls not consuming the plant, subjects taking cannabis during this study manifested very low anxiety scores, the result of cannabis compounds interacting with the body’s benzodiazepine receptors.

Similarly, cannabis makes a far better sleeping aid than prescription sleeping pills like Ambien, as the appropriate strains act as a natural, gentle sedative to put the mind at ease. Pharmaceutical sleeping pills, on the other hand, are highly addictive, can cause extreme psychosis and dangerous behavior, and as the new UK study has shown, are extremely harmful to the body.

“One of the effects of THC administration is sedation,” wrote Karen I. Bolla, the lead author of a 2008 study published in the journal Sleep. “One group of marijuana users report… they use marijuana to help them sleep. Interestingly, the marijuana users report negligible use of alcohol, sleeping pills, or other medicines to induce sleep.”

Sources for this article include:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com

http://www.bmj.com

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

http://blog.sfgate.com

http://science.naturalnews.com

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/044761_anti-anxiety_drugs_sleeping_pills_mortality.html##ixzz2zCPiq55n

Anti-anxiety drugs, sleeping pills linked to risk of death .

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Anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills have been linked to an increased risk of death, according to new research from the University of Warwick.

The large study, published in BMJ, shows that several anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) drugs or hypnotic drugs (sleeping pills) are associated with a doubling in the risk of mortality. Although these findings are based on routine data and need to be interpreted cautiously, the researchers recommended that a greater understanding of their impact is essential.

Professor Scott Weich, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Warwick, explained “The key message here is that we really do have to use these drugs more carefully. This builds on a growing body of evidence suggesting that their side effects are significant and dangerous. We have to do everything possible to minimise over reliance on anxiolytics and sleeping pills.”

“That’s not to say that they cannot be effective. But particularly due to their addictive potential we need to make sure that we help patients to spend as little time on them as possible and that we consider other options, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, to help them to overcome anxiety or sleep problems.”

The study accounted, where possible, for other factors such as age, smoking and alcohol use, other prescriptions and socioeconomic status. Crucially, the team controlled for contributing risk factors such as sleep disorders, anxiety disorders and other psychiatric illness in all participants.

34,727 people were tracked for seven and a half years on average from the time that they first received prescriptions for either an anxiolytic or hypnotic drug.

Benzodiazepines were the most commonly prescribed drug class, including diazepam and temazepam. The study also examined the effects of two other groups of drugs; the so-called ‘Z-drugs’ and all other anxiolytic and hypnotic drugs. Many patients received more than one drug over the course of the study, and 5% received prescriptions for drugs from all three groups.

Journal Reference:

  1. S. Weich, H. L. Pearce, P. Croft, S. Singh, I. Crome, J. Bashford, M. Frisher.Effect of anxiolytic and hypnotic drug prescriptions on mortality hazards: retrospective cohort study. BMJ, 2014; 348 (mar19 5): g1996 DOI:10.1136/bmj.g1996

Sleeping pills could actually IMPROVE your memory, claims controversial new research.

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  • Researchers claim that the zolpidem in some sleeping pills enhances the brain’s ability to build-up memories
  • They say the findings could help in the development of treatments for Alzheimer’s and dementia
  • Contradicts previous research which found the drug may actually CAUSE memory loss

 

 

 

Taking sleeping tablets could help improve your memory, according to controversial new research.

 

A team of researchers claim to have discovered the mechanism that enables the brain to build-up memories – and say they found that a commonly prescribed sleeping tablet containing zolpidem enhances this process.

 

They hope the discovery could lead to new sleep therapies that could improve memory for ageing adults and those with dementia, Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia.

 

The findings contradict a wealth of previous research that has suggested that sleeping pills can have devastating effects on health, including memory.

 

The new research claims to have demonstrated, for the first time, the critical role that sleep spindles play in consolidating memory in the hippocampus.

 

Sleep spindles are bursts of brain activity that last for a second or less during sleep.

 

Earlier research found a link between sleep spindles and the consolidation of memories that depend on the hippocampus, the part of the brain that is involved in memory forming, organising, and storing.

 

The research team say they showed that the drugs could significantly improve that process, far more than sleep alone.

 

Lead author of the study, Dr Sara Mednick, a psychologist from the University of California Riverside, said: ‘We found that a very common sleep drug can be used to increase memory.

 

‘This is the first study to show you can manipulate sleep to improve memory.

 

‘It suggests sleep drugs could be a powerful tool to tailor sleep to particular memory disorders.’

 

But previous research has suggested that sleeping pills taken by more than a million Britons significantly increase the risk of dementia.

 

Pensioners who used benzodiazepines – which include temazepam and diazepam – are 50 per cent more likely to succumb to the devastating illness, a Harvard University study found.

 

They work by changing the way messages are transmitted to the brain, which induces a calming effect but scientists believe that at the same time they may be interfering with chemicals in the brain known as neurotransmitters, which may be causing dementia.

 

The new study tested normal sleepers, who were given varying doses of sleeping pills and placebos, allowing several days between doses to allow the drugs to leave their bodies.

 

Researchers monitored their sleep, measured sleepiness and mood after napping, and used several tests to evaluate their memory.

 

They found that zolpidem significantly increased the density of sleep spindles and improved verbal memory consolidation.

 

Dr Mednick said: ‘Zolpidem enhanced sleep spindles in healthy adults producing exceptional memory performance beyond that seen with sleep alone or sleep with the comparison drug.

 

‘The results set the stage for targeted treatment of memory impairments as well as the possibility of exceptional memory improvement above that of a normal sleep period.’

 

Dr Mednick also hopes to study the impact of zolpidem on older adults who experience poor memory because individuals with Alzheimer’s, dementia and schizophrenia are known experience decreases in sleep spindles.

 

Dr Mednick, who began studying sleep in the early 2000s, says sleep is a very new field of research and its importance is generally not taught in medical schools.

 

‘We know very little about it,’ she said.

 

‘We do know that it affects behaviour, and we know that sleep is integral to a lot of disorders with memory problems.

 

‘We need to integrate sleep into medical diagnoses and treatment strategies. This research opens up a lot of possibilities.’

 

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk