Prescribed sleeping pills should be taken for no more than two to three weeks. Yet studies show that 14% of women report taking a sleeping pill every night. As we know, once women and men (though particularly women) become addicted to the supposed hedge against insomnia, it becomes difficult to stop.
Lucinda Sykes is a retired physician who has turned her focus to women and sleep.
When she was a child, she walked to a nearby pharmacy to refill her grandmother's prescription for sleeping pills. Lucinda didn't realize the potential devastating effects of those pills on her grandmother's health who died in her sixties of complications from Alzheimer's.
Many decades later, Lucinda is on a mission to educate women and explain how the brain works and how sleeping pills interfere with the important functions it completes as we sleep. The brain, says Lucinda, cleans itself, and gives itself a "power wash" when we sleep naturally. It rids itself of toxic materials, materials science now understands contribute to dementia and a shorter lifespan.
A study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease found that white participants who frequently took sleeping pills had a 79% higher chance of developing dementia than those who rarely or never took them. Black participants had a similar likelihood of developing dementia regardless of sleeping pill usage.
As we age, it is not unusual to sleep less and to experience more fragmented sleep. But those who try to extend or regulate their sleep with sleeping pills face serious risks, not only dementia but a shorter lifespan.
People are relying on sleeping pills more than ever to get a good night's rest, but a 2012 study by Scripps Clinic researchers links the medications to a 4.6 times higher risk of death and a significant increase in cancer cases among regular pill users.
So, what can you do, if you are a woman, particularly a woman 45+, to quit the pills and still improve your sleep?
For suggestions from getting out of bed if you cannot sleep to avoiding the blue light from computers and other devices, to spending time outside in nature, listen to my conversation with Lucinda on "Older Women & Friends." You can check it out at:
While you're at it, listen to other episodes.
Please tell your friends and family how much you enjoy the podcast and why you think they will, too.
Comentários