Sleep Medication
Roughly four percent of Americans are taking a sleep aid. Prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) sleep aids are among the most widely used medicines. Their popularity has been spurred by aggressive marketing over the last decade, but also by changes in our culture that have disrupted good sleep habits (TVs, computers,…
Sedative sleeping pills can nearly double the risk for car accidents among new users compared with nonusers, a University of Washington study suggests. Researchers looked at prescription records and motor vehicle crash records of more than 400,000 Washington state drivers who had a drug benefit in the Group Health Cooperative…
According to a new study, the use of sleeping pills put people with heart failure at a greater risk of serious heart problems and death. Research found that patients who took sleeping pills were 8 times more likely to be readmitted to the hospital for heart failure or to die from…
The number of emergency department visits involving adverse reactions to the sleep medication zolpidem rose nearly 220 percent from 6,111 visits in 2005 to 19,487 visits in 2010 according to a report from The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Zolpidem is the active ingredient in Ambien, Ambien…
