You may never know.
A number of studies have shown
that drugs like Ambien and Lunesta offer no significant improvement in
the quality of sleep that a person gets. They give only a tiny bit more in the quantity department, too. In one study financed by the National Institutes of Health, patients
taking popular prescription sleeping pills fell asleep just twelve
minutes faster than those given a sugar pill, and slept for a grand
total of only eleven minutes longer throughout the night.
If popular sleeping pills don’t
offer a major boost in sleep time or quality, then why do so many people
take them? Part of the answer is the well-known placebo effect. Taking any pill, even one filled with sugar, can give some measure of comfort. But sleeping pills do something more than that. Drugs
like Ambien have the curious effect of causing what is known as
anterograde amnesia. In other words, ingesting the drug essentially
makes it temporarily harder for the brain to form new short-term
memories. This explains why those who take a pill may toss and turn in
the middle of the night but say the next day that they slept soundly.
Their brains simply weren’t recording all those fleeting minutes of
wakefulness, allowing them to face each morning with a clean slate,
unaware of anything that happened over the last six or seven hours. [More]
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