Side effects of sleeping pills

After taking sleeping pills, will you never wake up again?

If I take sleeping pills, will I never wake up again?

This is many people’s biggest fear about sleeping pills.

In the past, this problem may have been serious, because old-fashioned sleeping pills, such as bromides, barbiturates, etc., were very toxic, and the lethal dose was very close to the therapeutic dose. If you were not careful, you could die. Maybe if you overdo it, you will never wake up again, which is a shame.

For example: You can sleep after taking three and a half tablets of a certain medicine, but you will be poisoned after taking six tablets. One day you took one pill, but it didn’t work (the therapeutic dose was not reached); you took two pills, but it didn’t work; three pills, it still didn’t work. As a result, you get angry and want to say that three pills have no effect, so you take three more pills in one go - what do you think will happen?

Will sleeping pills harm your body?

Many people are worried that sleeping pills will harm their health and therefore refuse to take them. Will sleeping pills harm the body? It's hard to say, because it's really hard to define what it means to harm the body. For example: barbiturates will enhance the metabolic function of the liver, which is also known as "enhancing the detoxification function", but this is a double-sided blade: on the one hand, the liver will accelerate the detoxification of poisons; on the other hand, the liver will It also quickly metabolizes nutrients in the body, such as vitamins. As a result, no matter whether it was good or bad, it was all gone. Do you think this will hurt your health or not?

Another example: Anxiety will stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, and a large amount of sympathetic nerve substances will be released into the blood vessels, which will cause problems such as accelerated heartbeat and elevated blood pressure. In the long run, it will damage cardiovascular function and even cause cardiovascular disease. Lead to myocardial infarction or stroke. After giving bzd, anxiety will decrease, which naturally has a protective effect on these organs; but bzd may cause memory loss - in this case, is it considered to be harmful to the body or not? Similarly, if you insist on not taking medicine, but the result is long-term insomnia, will this be better for your health?

So in medicine, we cannot look at things in dichotomy, nor can we be like quacks who say indiscriminately that "all Western medicines will harm the body." We can only make use of the advantages of each drug and avoid its disadvantages based on the current situation, maximize the effect and minimize the side effects.

Looking at things this way, we can instead discuss sleeping pills in terms of "effects on the body." Since the current sleeping pills are mainly BZD and omega-1 active drugs, supplemented by auxiliary sleeping pills (antihistamines, tricyclic antidepressants, trazodone, antipsychotics), we will not mention the old-fashioned sleeping pills at all.

Possible side effects of various sleeping pills

"Excessive sedation, feeling groggy when you wake up the next day" This is a very common side effect, no matter which kind of sleeping pill, bzd Whether it is auxiliary sleeping pills or even omega-1 acting drugs, this phenomenon may be caused.

The main causes are excessive sedation and continued drug residue. Although some drugs have short half-lives and theoretically should not cause such symptoms, everyone's physical condition is different, and the speed of absorbing or metabolizing the drug may be different, and the strength of the drug response may also be different, so even short-acting drugs Sleeping pills may also make people drowsy the next day and make it difficult to concentrate.

So, while taking sleeping pills, you are not allowed to operate machines or drive. Of course, it is difficult to completely avoid it in practice, but at least you must reduce the time you spend operating machines or driving. If you can't do it, don't do it. When there is no way to avoid it, you have to be careful.

Loss of coordination in movement

There are many muscles in human beings. When doing any movement, all muscles must be coordinated to move together, otherwise it will cause a joke, as in the last Simply hold chopsticks. If the five fingers do their own thing, let alone reaching out to pick things up, you can't even hold the chopsticks. The cerebellum is responsible for much of this coordination work, but bzd will suppress the cerebellum. The result is that movement coordination is not smooth, and it becomes difficult to dress, write and other actions. Fortunately, under normal dosage, this phenomenon is unlikely to occur. Even if it does occur, it will return to normal as long as the dosage is reduced or the drug effect slowly wears off.

Excessive muscle relaxation

bzd will suppress the nerves in the spinal cord and relax the muscles. In layman's terms, not only the brain is asleep, but the muscles are also asleep.

Once the brain is awake but the muscles are sleeping, people will feel that the whole body is limp, have no strength at all, and cannot work.

This may not be a bad thing for people who have long-term excessive muscle tightness. But for the elderly, they may accidentally fall when they get up. If they fall and injure their heads, it will be a big problem.

Memory is affected

Some people do not fall asleep immediately after taking sleeping pills. They can continue to do things and talk to people, but fall asleep after a while. When I got up the next day, I forgot everything I had done. This kind of temporary amnesia is more likely to occur with powerful sleeping pills, whether they are BZD or omega-1 drugs. But this is only temporary and will not affect memory.

Out-of-control behavior and sleepwalking

In life, there are always some unsatisfactory things hidden deep in the heart, but bzd will weaken the power of psychological suppression, resulting in inner suppressed anger and emotions , let it out to your heart’s content. Some people will become angry and agitated after taking it; some people will walk around unconsciously, pick up things, move things, and even go shopping outside. In severe cases, they will engage in inappropriate behaviors, such as taking off their clothes in public, etc. I couldn't remember the incident at all afterwards.

Respiratory depression

When patients have certain respiratory or neurological diseases, the use of bzd may cause respiratory depression. When bzd is used together with alcohol, this effect will also be enhanced. However, it is generally not a serious problem. Allergy: A small number of patients have special constitutions and are allergic to sleeping pills. No matter which drug they are, they may cause allergies.

Sexual function affected

There are reports that bzd can cause sexual dysfunction in rare cases. Tricyclic antidepressants may also cause impotence and loss of sexual desire. As for trazodone, it may prolong a man's erection, but this is reversible and will not cause organ damage or permanent impairment. This is different from the effect of alcohol. Long-term use of alcohol may cause permanent impairment of sexual function.

Gastrointestinal discomfort

Zolpidem or zopiclone may cause side effects of dizziness, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, but the probability of occurrence is low. Tricyclic antidepressants may cause similar problems.

Side effects that only occur with auxiliary hypnotics

Extrapyramidal side effects and endocrine effects (rare)

Some tricyclic antidepressants and antipsychotics Because of the anti-dopamine effect, extrapyramidal side effects may occur, such as acute muscle atonia, Parkinson's symptoms, and akathisia. In addition, it may also cause prolactin to rise, which may cause women to stop menstruation, men to produce breast milk, and male and female sexual desire to decrease. But when these drugs are used as sleep aids, such problems are almost impossible to occur.

Three tablets plus three tablets, one to six tablets, oh no, you are poisoned!

It’s so easy. The jump from therapeutic dose to dangerous dose is too close. The difference in safety can be imagined. Moreover, everyone’s constitution and physical condition are different, and no one is sure what to eat. How many tablets are effective and how many tablets will cause poisoning. Doctors have no way to prevent it in advance. To make matters worse, old-fashioned sleeping pills are highly addictive and can easily be enhanced by alcohol. If someone is drunk and takes a few more tablets in a daze, the toxicity will be doubled, and they will really never wake up again.

The commonly used sleeping pills are no longer easy to cause death.

But these are all things of the past. Since the invention of bzd, its lethal dose has been far away from the therapeutic dose. Many people have taken hundreds of sleeping pills - the author has even seen patients who took a thousand pills, fell into a deep sleep, but still could not die.

However, the author once saw a patient who died after taking a large amount of sleeping pills and toast bread. After an autopsy, it was discovered that the toast bread choked in the trachea and suffocated to death. Therefore, after taking sleeping pills, it is best to wait calmly until you want to sleep before going to sleep. Don't do too many things. It is better if you have someone else with you.

What is more likely to cause problems now are other drugs that assist sleep, such as low-dose antipsychotics, tricyclic antidepressants, etc., which may cause strong anti-acetylcholine effects when taken in large amounts. , may affect brain and heart function, causing coma or even death.

But basically, the chance of using this type of sleep-aiding drugs is relatively small. Generally, they are only used to assist BZD when the amount of BZD sleeping pills is already very large. Moreover, except for psychiatrists, general doctors are unlikely to use such drugs.

So, based on the current situation, it is unlikely that someone will wake up after taking sleeping pills, unless the patient himself has some problems, or the medicines he takes conflict with each other, etc. . These problems need to be diagnosed by a doctor and drug use monitored to avoid dangers.