In my years of practice I’ve seen a lot of things I would never have guessed I’d see. Like this that I heard just the other day and that knocked me back in my chair.
My new vice president L.O. came in my office for a meeting and told me, “I drove through my garage door on Saturday. Didn’t even know it had…”
“Wait, go back.” I stopped her in mid-sentence. “You drove through your garage door?”
“Yeah, I know. I was working out with my trainer up at the new Bally’s in Melbourne and when I came home I drove my brand new Lexus right through the aluminum garage door. Then I went into my house to shower. I never knew.”
Sleeping pills can make you do some pretty odd things, but this was a new one.
She said, “My husband came in and said ‘What happened to the garage door?’ I had to tell him I just didn’t know what I was doing.”
He said, ‘Well, why wouldn’t you know what you were doing? How did you drive through the garage door?’ And all I could say was, ‘I don’t know, except that I took an Ambien the night before.”
You might have one of these drugs meant to help you sleep in your cabinet right now … Rozerem, Lunesta, Xanax … Valium … Restoril or any of the benzodiazepines…
And they’re being used in millions of people.
A lot of sleep aids impair motor skills and brain function the same way heavy drinking does, increasing your chances of falling or having an accident. And as you can see from L.O.’s story, they can even give you a “hangover” the next day with “brain fog” and some serious grogginess.
There’s even evidence they are increasing the incidence of
cancer.According to the studies done on some of the newer sleeping pills, they found new cases of skin and four other cancers among the random people who got sleeping pills. And no new cancers among those who only received placebo.1
And those who averaged over 132 sleeping pills per year were 35% more likely to develop a new cancer. 2
I’ve seen lots of frustrated, frazzled, and addicted insomniacs who come to my clinic after learning these lessons the hard way. They still can’t sleep, and their doctors have told them they’ve exhausted their options.
Yet there are perfectly safe, natural, and highly effective treatments for sleep disorders.
One of the first things you can try is to improving your sleep habits. This can be a little bit challenging at first, but like any routine you’ll be surprised how quickly and easily you can adapt. Here are a couple of things to try:
- Read before bed: Most people think it’s your body that needs sleep. But it’s your brain. Reading is relaxing for your body, but requires a fair amount of cognition. Because you’re working your brain, you’re more likely to grow tired enough to sleep soundly through the night.
- Sleep in quiet and darkness: If you sleep with the TV or the light on, you are interfering with your brain’s natural sleep cycle and production of sleep hormones like melatonin. Turn it all off and sleep in total darkness. Even blocking the light from under a door or covering the blue glow from an electronic device could stop you from waking up.
- Try some Jamaican dogwood extract: The leaves and bark of the Jamaican dogwood tree have long been used in the tropics to relieve pain like headaches and toothaches, but also as a treatment for insomnia and anxiety. All you need is 10 mg a night.
- Increase your thiamine intake: You might know it better as vitamin B1. It’s well known for supporting healthy circulation in the brain. But studies show thiamine improves sleep patterns when you have enough. The best food sources are organ meats, yeast, peas, pork, beans, and sunflower seeds. To regulate sleep, I recommend 40mg a day.
1. Kripke, D, MD. “The Dark Side of Sleeping Pills.” e-book. darksideofsleepingpills.com. Retrieved Oct 1, 2012.
2. Kripke D, Langer R, Kline L. “Hypnotics’ association with mortality or cancer: a matched cohort study.” BMJ Open. 2012;2:e000850.