TORONTO – New findings from an American study are causing some researchers to think twice about sleeping pills.
The study, published in the BMJ Open journal, shows a correlation between taking common hypnotic sleeping pills and a higher risk of death, up to five times higher in some cases.
“We are not certain. But it looks like sleeping pills could be as risky as smoking cigarettes. It looks much more dangerous to take these pills than to treat insomnia another way,” said study leader Daniel F. Kripke, MD.
The hypnotic sleeping pills analyzed in the study include drugs such as zolpidem and temazepam, which are drugs that cause a person to fall asleep – making them markedly different from other sleeping aids, such as melatonin, which promote relaxation.
Kripke’s team found that over 2.5 years, the death rate for those in the study who did not use hypnotic sleeping pills was 1.2 per cent. For people who had hypnotic sleeping pill prescriptions the death rate was 6.1 per cent.
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“We think these sleeping pills are very dangerous. We think they cause death. We think they cause cancers,” said Kripke.
“It is possible but not proven that reducing the use of these pills would lower the U.S. death rate.”
Many experts have questioned the study’s correlation however, stating that it is not proof that sleeping pills kill people.
“You cannot assume, just because you find this kind of association, that hypnotics are killing people,” said Nancy Collop, MD, president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and director of the Sleep Center at Emory University School of Medicine.
Although medications may be prescribed in cases of debilitating insomnia, many health professionals recommend that people suffering from insomnia consult alternate treatments to prescribed hypnotic sleeping pills, such as developing proper sleep hygiene.
Click here for sleep hygiene tips and other strategies available for getting a good night’s sleep.
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