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Harmful Sleeping Pills: Reasons to Not Take Sleeping Pills When Avoidable

By ebazaar ⋅ October 11, 2009 ⋅

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Insomnia is a condition when a person has substantial difficulty to fall asleep, or awakening from a sleep prematurely with subsequent failure to fall back to sleep. This condition will lead to other problems that may be psychological in nature such as severe uncontrollable irritation, depression, poor memory and other emotional disturbance. It may seem a little exaggerated to say that insomnia could kill but in reality, and indirectly it is a problem that could lead to fatal consequent. Most people with severe insomnia problem results to the use of sleeping pills, which is of drug category that could do harm to a person’s health if consumed in a long term or in a large doses. People have died from taking excessive sleeping pills, and it’s not of uncommon issue.

About nearly 8% of American who are suffering from Insomnia are presently taking prescription sleeping pills regularly, which means around 20-25 millions of people in the United States alone are highly dependent on sleeping pills to help them get over the problem of insomnia. This is showing us the extend of how drug-oriented our society has become. This may be a shortcut way of countering the problem, but this also show how lazy and narrowed our society has become in solving a problem. More people are caring less and less of their health.

Taking sleeping pills as part of insomnia treatment may be able to put a short term lapse time from the problem but it certainly doesn’t solve anything. At the outset, there is something that all of us, especially those has been taking sleeping pills regularly, should know currently that over-the-counter sleeping aids have been carefully monitored and studied in controlled experiments and results shown that these medications are no more effective in inducing sleep than a placebo.

In truth, what these pills really do is more or less similar to the effect of caffeine. Caffeine do not add a person’s energy but instead give it a boost, leaving you feeling more tired and exhausted later. Sleep studies shows that by taking sleeping pills can alter your sleeping cycle drastically, suppressing REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. It is known that people who are suppressed of REM sleep can become easily irritable, depressed, aggressive, angry or restless which in the end effect the subject’s emotional and psychological health thoroughly.

Getting to know the Sleeping cycle:

In simple terms, sleeping cycle can be divided into 4 clear phase before entering REM sleep phase:

The Pre-sleep phase or stage 1; where the initial precursor is muscle spasm, and later followed by slowing of the pulse and muscle relaxation.
Stage 2; happens after 10-15 minutes of stage one where the brain waves grew larger and the eyes roll from side to side.
Stage 3; happens after 20 minutes of stage 2, where the brain waves are much slower but fairly large. Breathing will become slow and even, and the body muscles are much more relaxed.
Delta sleep or stage4; a person enters this stage slowly from stage 3 which takes several minutes (it takes longer in the early part of the night when a person sleeps) and it will sustain for about 20 minutes before entering the lighter REM sleep characterized by rapid eye movements.
REM sleep last for more than 10 minutes before the cycle starts again at stage 2,3 and so forth. The cycle may last for about 90 minutes.

Sleeping pills are not overall a bad or futile remedy in helping those with insomnia. It is better that you follow the doctor’s prescription. Nevertheless, it is still a drug that can be harmful in a long-term, therefore, any long-term intake recommendation is of nothing good. The best way is to change your lifestyle and habits or try eating foods that can help you sleep. Alas, there are so many different ways of adhering this problem, and sleeping pills may not be the only answer. This is because insomnia can only be treated if its true cause or causes are recognized and removed.

Take some time to read other options of insomnia treatment.

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