Sleep Disorder Drugs - Sleep Disorder Treatments - Remedies For Sleeping Disorders

Sleep Disorder Drugs

According to the National Sleep Foundation, one out of every four Americans take some form of sleep-aid medication or sedative to help them sleep better or longer. Insomnia, the most common type of sleeping disorder, affects an estimated 60 million Americans each year, with sufferers experiencing an inability to fall asleep, stay asleep, or feel refreshed after waking. Studies have linked a lack of sleep to many chronic diseases and conditions, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and depression.

Prescription and over-the-counter medications are the most commonly prescribed treatment option for people suffering from insomnia or other sleep disorders, especially if the conditions are chronic or occur frequently. Medications such as sedatives and hypnotics allow patients to fall asleep and stay asleep longer by acting on certain chemicals in the brain. These chemicals are often unbalanced in people suffering from insomnia. By getting more high-quality sleep, daily mental and physical functioning is often dramatically improved in patients taking sleep medications. Common drugs used in the treatment of sleep disorders include:

Antihistamines (Nytol, Sleep-Eez, Sominex, Benadryl, Advil PM, Excedrin PM, Tylenol PM, Unisom)
Barbiturates (Luminal, Mebaral)
Benzodiazepine hypnotics (Valium, Klonopin, Halcion, Ativan, Xanax, Serax, ProSom)
Non-benzodiazepine hypnotics (Sonata, Lunesta, Ambien)

Side Effects

To avoid unwanted side effects, sleep medications are typically prescribed for short-term periods (two weeks or less). Some strong hypnotics such as Lunesta can cause withdrawal symptoms when treatment is stopped, with symptoms including anxiety, sweating, vomiting, nausea, and shakiness. Most prescription sleep medications can cause side effects such as next-day drowsiness, dizziness, facial swelling, headache, bloating, constipation, blurred vision, dry mouth, nausea, or strange sleep-behaviors.

Interactions and Warnings

Hypnotics or other sleep-aids should not be combined with other medications that cause drowsiness, such as prescription pain medications, over-the-counter cough and cold medications, drugs for depression or other psychiatric disorders, or drugs for treating Parkinson’s disease. Sleep disorder drugs should never be used with alcohol, as a patient’s heart rate could be slowed to dangerous or even deadly levels. Certain drugs such as oral contraceptives or activities such as smoking may also affect the absorption of sleep medications in the body, causing adverse effects or dangerously slowed breathing.

FDA Warnings on Sleep Drugs

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) strengthened warning labels on all sedative-hypnotic sleep medications to warn of the potential for the drugs to cause severe allergic reactions and dangerous sleep-related behaviors, such as sleep-driving, accompanied by amnesia. Drugs with the heightened warning labels include Ambien, Ambien CR, Dalmane, Doral, Halcion, Lunesta, ProSom, Restoril, Rozerem, Sonata, and others. Sleep aids have been shown to cause strange sleep behaviors in rare cases, such as driving while asleep, cooking food while asleep, or wandering at night, with little memory of the event the following day.

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