Prescription Sleep Aids – All You Need to Know about Prescription Sleep Aids
In some cases, patients suffering from insomnia have no choice, but to take prescription sleep aids to get relief and have a normal sleep at night. The fact that these medications are prescribed by medical professionals does not guarantee their effectiveness and safety. For this reason, you should be perfectly aware of their effects and side effects before using any of these drugs.
Prescription sleep aids are usually prescribed to individuals who suffer from chronic insomnia that is caused by an underlying physical or psychological condition. Your doctor will examine you first and you will undergo some tests in order for any underlying conditions to be diagnosed or excluded as causes of your insomnia. In most cases, patients who take prescription drugs for insomnia suffer from an anxiety disorder, depression or more severe psychological conditions. You may have to take such medication, even if underlying causes of your insomnia have not been found.
There are three types of prescription sleep aids that you may take, but they all work in the same way. The ingredients in the drug affect different receptors in the brain to make your nervous system slow down. In general, some medications work to induce sleep while others are used to make you stay asleep, but their effect on the brain is the same. Due to the way they work, these pills are called sedative hypnotics.
Benzodiazepines are the oldest class of prescription sleep aids. This may explain why they are considered to be the most dangerous to use. Even though these medications produce good results and provide sufficient insomnia relief, they tend to be both physically and psychologically addictive. This means that your body may “crave” for the pill and that you may think you cannot fall asleep without it. Other drawbacks of these pills include decreased effectiveness and even loss of effectiveness over time. In addition, once you stop taking benzodiazepines, your insomnia symptoms will return.
Non-benzodiazepines are newer prescription sleep aids. Even though these medications have not been found to cause addiction and serious withdrawal symptoms, the long term effects of their intake have not been studies fully and are not fully understood. These medications may become ineffective after a while. If you stop taking them, your insomnia is most likely going to return. Additionally, people taking non-benzodiazepines may experience side effects, such as morning grogginess, dizziness, nausea and headaches.
Some physicians prescribe antidepressants to people suffering from chronic insomnia, because they believe the root causes of their sleeplessness are depression and/or anxiety. However, the Food and Drug Administration has not approved antidepressants as sleep aids. In addition, the correlation between insomnia and these psychological conditions has not been fully studied yet.
Now you know the most important things about prescription sleep aids. The general conclusion is that even though they may be effective, your sleeplessness is highly likely to rebound after you stop taking such a drug. That is why you may want to consider supplementary and perhaps even alternative sleep aids like cognitive behavioral therapy that may help you get relief for good.