Sleeping pills are drugs that help out with sleeping problems like insomnia. You can get sleeping pills in UK and in other countries. All you have to do is swallow a pill and drift off to sleep. It is safe and tolerable, and it does its job. But like every other medication, it comes with some considerable risks and side effects that many people don’t fail to notice. It is usually recommended that before you start using sleeping pills, prescribed or not, you do your research and know what the potential risks are.
Let’s get right into it. Here are some of the risks associated with sleeping pills:
Tolerance
This is when your body gets accustomed to the sleeping pills after you’ve taken them for a long period of time. When this happens, you start taking increased dosages every time you want to get yourself to sleep.
The risk with doing this is that if your tolerance for the drug keeps increasing and you manage to take a dose that’s high enough, it could lead to breathing problems while you sleep, which could cause death.
The way to lower the risk of tolerance is to not take the pills for more than two weeks.
Drowsy Driving
There has been some new research data that lets us know how certain sleeping pills affect certain activities. It says that if you take a certain form of the drug Ambien, it may last long enough in your body when you wake up and can affect activities like driving.
Women and people who take extended-release forms of the drug are particularly at risk. This is why the dosages are lower for women and sometimes for men as well. In order for you to not find yourself in this situation, be sure to follow your doctor’s orders. Also, be sure you have enough time to fit in a minimum of seven hours of sleep.
Sleep-walking or amnesia
Doing things in our sleep isn’t a new thing. We have always been aware that sometimes we do random things like sleep-talk, but it has been noticed that some sleeping pills could cause side effects like sleepwalking or even amnesia.
When this happens, you sometimes wake up wondering where you are or what you’ve done. If you experience this, it is recommended that you pay your doctor a visit quickly.
High Risk of Falling
This side effect was noticed in hospital patients. According to the study, patients who took sleeping pills to help them sleep while in the hospital had a higher risk of falling than those who did not take the drug while in the hospital.
The sleeping pills reduce your body’s ability to keep you upright while you stand or walk, and this can potentially be a problem.
Trouble Stopping Medication
Just like with your body getting used to a certain dosage and you having to increase that dosage to get sleep, you can also find it hard to stop taking sleeping pills if you have been taking them for a long period of time.
If you have been taking these drugs for a long time and you quit immediately, your sleeping problems could actually get worse because your body has grown used to the drugs. If you want to stop taking sleep medications, seek advice from your doctor and plan it out.
