The dangers of sleeping pills

People often worry about sleeplessness—which is exactly what drug companies encourage. Using their influence, five pharmaceutical companies managed to establish a National Sleep Foundation that labeled sleeping problems as “public health crisis” and a “national emergency.”  The primary pharmaceutical sponsors of this so-called non-profit organization, founded in 1990, all manufacture sleeping pills.

Naturally, the pharmaceutical companies launched ad campaigns to deal with this “public health crisis.” Their campaigns were wildly successful: between 2001 and 2005 sleeping pill prescriptions grew by 55 percent, to 45.5 million; by 2011, the number was 60 million.  By 2012, 4% of our population was taking sleeping pills.

But here’s the thing: Sleeping pills, such as Ambien and Lunesta aren’t even especially helpful. In a 2007 study financed by the National Institutes of Health, these “hypnotics” reduced the average time to fall asleep by 12.8 minutes and increased total sleep time by only 11.4 minutes. One drug, Sonata, did not extend sleeping time at all. (Test subjects slept six hours and 20 minutes whether they had taken a sleeping pill or a placebo.) Such a paltry benefit doesn’t begin to compensate for the dangers of sleeping pills—which are considerable.

In a 2012 study reported in the British Medical Journal researchers compared medical records of 10,529 people who used hypnotic drugs with 23,671 who used none during the same period. They found that patients taking the sleeping pills on a regular basis were nearly five times as likely as non-users to die over a period of two and a half years. Heavy users were more likely to develop cancer. Previous studies performed in Norway, Canada, and Sweden had also found a link between sleeping pills and increased risk of death. The Swedish study, which followed people for 20 years, found that regular users of hypnotics were 5.6 times as likely to die during the study period, while women were twice as likely to die.

Best to count sheep, I think.

Next week: A sleep survey

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.