Anyone who has followed my blog or heard me talk can tell you that I'm not the biggest fan of conventional medical treatments. While there are times when they are necessary and life saving, when it comes to long term disease care, modern medicine fails miserably. In this week's blog, I'll detail a class of medications that brings billions of dollars a year into BigPharma's pockets, all the while killing Americans.
According to a recent study published in The British Medical Journal, sleep medications in general, but hypnotics specifically, can increase your risk of death by up to 532% over a 30 month period. Sleep medications entail several classes, including barbituates, tranquilizers, hypnotics, and even over the counter anti-histamines.
Since 1998, the hypnotic class has taken over the sleeping pill marketplace, rapidly supplanting both barbituates and tranquilizers as the drug of choice for insomniacs. These drugs include Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata, and Restoril, along with their not so distant cousins Halcion and Dalmane. These medications have steadily crept up the charts of drug use, and it is estimated that as of 2010, 6-10% of Americans utilize these on an at least occasional basis.
Much research has gone into deciding how much sleep we need, when we need it, and which medications can help us get it. Unfortunately, this research has shown for a long time that all of these medications increase the risk of death, but it wasn't until this recent study that all obvious confounding factors were ruled out. While some believe that it was the insomnia that created the increased risk, we now know that just by taking sleeping pills, you are more likely to die.
The study looked at over 10,000 subjects who used sleeping pills, and matched each with two non-sleeping pill users of similar age, same sex, and smoking status. In addition, they accounted for ethnicity, alcohol use, marital status, and BMI (height/weight) to ensure accurate results. No study to date has eliminated as many factors while studying sleep medication effects in this large of a population.
The results of this study were remarkable, and bring into question the safety of this medication class altogether. In those patients who were prescribed 1-18 pills per year, they saw an increased death rate of 360%. If the prescription rose to between 18 and 132 pills per year, the death rate rose to 443% compared to the control group. At over 132 pills prescribed per year, there was a whopping 532% increased risk of death. This study simply looked at prescriptions, not whether or not they were actually used. However, the prescription of over 18 pills per year insinuates significant use.
What can explain this extraordinary death risk associated with sleeping pills? Why are they so dangerous? Unfortunately, we don't have all the answers, but we do have some theories based on actions and effects.
Sleeping Pills increase sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a condition where the person stops breathing for a time during sleep. Normally, the person wakes with a sudden snort which interrupts their sleep some, but they then resume sleeping. In those who take sleeping pills, we see the sleep centers of the brain suppressed, and an increase in sleep apnea. In some of these patients, they don't wake with a snort, but die in their sleep from a lack of oxygen to the brain.
Sleeping Pills increase daytime drowsiness. You would think that by taking a sleep aid, you would be more attentive and awake the following day. The research shows the opposite is true. Because these sleep aids stay in the body for at least 12-18 hours, the day after is normally a day where the person is less attentive and has a harder time staying awake. For those who take these pills habitually, they are in a constant fog. This can lead to a variety of problems, the least of which is falls and accidents. We see a significant increase in both in those who use medical sleep aids.
Sleeping Pills disinhibit aversive behaviors. Hypnotic sleep aids make the user less likely to recognize dangerous situations and change their behavior to avoid them. The example is of mice who, when they push a button, get an electric shock. Normal mice stop pushing the button pretty quickly. Mice on sleep aids, however, continue to push the button and receive the shock. It's like they can't learn that the button has bad consequences, and so forget that it's bad to push.
Sleeping Pills turn your brain off. After taking a sleep aid, parts of the brain stop working, while other parts continue. This creates the "Ambien Zombie" who is sound asleep, yet appears normal as they walk, drive, or raid the fridge. If you combine this "Ambien Zombie" effect with the disinhibition efffect, you can have someone who can act without knowing what they are doing, or that the action is dangerous or wrong. There are reports of these medications being suspected as complicit in some criminal cases.
Sleeping Pills don't increase sleep by much. Amazing as it may seem, sleep aids only increase sleep by a few minutes per night, if at all. While patients report significant improvement in sleep quality and quantity, the objective data of EEG's and observation shows a different story. It seems these medications make the users feel they have effects that aren't really there. In fact, after two weeks of use, there seems to be no research showing any benefit at all to these medications.
Sleeping Pills are addictive and create insomnia. Believe it or not, the cure actually causes the disease in this case. These medications change the chemistry of the brain enough that if not taken, the night following the dose will be significantly worse. While night one may seem better, night two is going to be worse, unless you take it again. But again, after two weeks of use, there is no benefit above a placebo, and now withdrawal becomes problematic, showing signs and symptoms similar to heroin addiction.
Sleeping Pills create an amnesia state. It seems one of the reasons the patients believe they are sleeping better is that these medications create an amnesia so you don't remember you didn't sleep. If you can't remember being awake, you must have been asleep, so they must be working. And then, if you try to go off and you really can't sleep, they must really work then, right?
Sleeping Pills increase the risk of infections. While these medications don't have a direct effect on the immune system, they do show a significant increase of infections in users. It may be due to the GERD (gastrointestinal reflux) that they cause, which can break down the lung's resistance or something else, but infection rates definitely are higher.
Sleeping Pills cause cancer. This is probably the most startling statistic the study confirmed that had been hinted at in earlier studies. In those who use sleeping pills, new cancer rates were 20% and 35% higher in the top two highest user groups compared to those who don't take sleep aids. Anything that increases cancer risk by that amount is extremely dangerous. If there was a supplement that even had one tenth of that risk, it would be pulled from the shelves immediately by the FDA and banned forever. A drug class that does it, however, is no big deal, and continues to be prescribed at an astounding rate. Cancer risk is something we should e always looking to diminish, and yet, here we have multiple studies which show it's there with sleep aids.
When you look at what sleeping pills do, and compare them to what they are supposed to do (and don't), it is obvious that this class should be quickly pulled from the market, and only prescribed to help patients withdraw from the addiction they create. If you are currently taking one of these medications, know that if you continue them for the next 30 months, you have somewhere between a 360% and 532% increased risk of dying than if you were able to stop them. Since I am not a medical doctor, I cannot recommend anyone change anything about their prescription medications. All I can do is warn you of what can happen if you continue to believe conventional medicine's lies. There are better, safer, natural options out there than can help with insomnia, as I detailed in my blog Is It Bedtime Yet?. One solution I didn't mention at the time includes the use of amino acids to balance brain chemistry, which has an extremely high effective rate in treating insomnia.
The decision to partake in the farce of sleeping pills is up to the individual, but so far, medicine hasn't been forthright in letting patients know the dangerous effects these medications have. If given all of the information, we can make good decisions. Unfortunately, you can't rely on conventional medicine to give you all the facts. That means you have to seek out information on your own, and often will end up more informed than the one prescribing the treatment. Know what you are putting in your body and how it can affect you. In this case, what you don't know can kill you.
Look for future blogs that will give more information and insights into improving your health with natural health care. You can also visit my website, like me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, or listen to my radio show.
For full text of the study mentioned, visit here or to view the lead author's web book on the subject, see Dark Side of Sleeping Pills.
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