Insomnia Treatment - Is Your Doctor Always Right?

A lot of you can probably relate to this scenario. After working 10 hours of office routine work with stressful meetings and phone calls, you can finally manage to drive home in one piece. Your dog is barking and wiggling his tail to welcome you home and the baby is crying... A few hours later, you are lying awake no matter how hard you try. You mind just can't stop thinking about your client's call, or the presentation tomorrow. Day after day, this terrible routine develops what is often referred to insomnia. And you finally decide to seek a professional advice from your doctor for the insomnia treatment.



With just a few questions asking from your doctor about what might go wrong with your sleep pattern; you get yourself a prescription of Ambien, one of the most popular prescribed sleeping pills. After taking just this magic pill, you did indeed get your 8 hours sleep at night.



But are you really getting the 'Restful' sleep you supposed to get?



Did you really 'sleep' 8 hours?



And finally, did your doctor cure your insomnia for good with just a single prescription of the magic pill?



To answer these questions, let me give you a quick crash course about sleep.



In order to fall sleep, you need to go through 5 different stages of sleep. For the first and second stages of sleep, they are often referred to light sleep which you feel lightly awake and your mind begins to drift away from the reality. Then, you will enter to the deep sleep stages 3 and 4 and REM (Rapid Eye Movement). Basically, you must be able to enter to the first stage, then the second stage and so on. Deep sleep stage is where you get rejuvenated and make you feel refreshed the next morning.



Now you have some basic understanding of how sleep works, let's talk about what that magic pill, Ambien, does to your body. Ambien is one of the most popular Benzodiazepines (aka BZs) pill which most BZs were actually developed as anti-anxiety drugs, they simply have a side effect of making someone feel drowsy, and this is why doctors prescribe them.



Most BZs lose their effectiveness after 4 to 6 weeks, because your brain becomes habituated to their effects, unless you increase the dose you are taking. Ambien also causes high blood pressure, and should not be taken by anyone with heart problems.



The effects of BZs are WORSE than Insomnia Itself!



The reason why BZs can make you sleep is that the chemical will interrupt your brainwaves pattern and force your brain to enter stage 2 of sleep (light sleep). But your mind will tend to stay in stage 2 for a long time and hence, not getting enough deep sleep as a result.



That explains why you can get 8 hours of sleep after taking it. However, you often feel tired, and disoriented next morning due to lack of deep sleep.



As a matter of fact, BZs can actually help you resolve your insomnia problem for weeks, but not intend to or mean to 'cure' your insomnia for good as the drug itself can't really do that.



By the way, you will be shocked how many hours of education the doctors get about solving sleep disorder during their years of medical training, a measly 3 hours in average. So prescribing BZs like Ambien will be a quick fix for most doctors, especially the multi billion dollars drug companies often give pressure to them and free samples for doctors to give away to their patients. It's a simple win-win situation to them but a significant loss to your health.



So, is your doctor always right to solving your insomnia treatment? You are the judge.