The symptoms of insomnia can run the gamut or be as simple as not sleeping enough. There are many ways to find out if you suffer from a sleep disorder or if you have insomnia. Insomnia is a disorder that affects most people who are in their declining years but can affect anyone. Environmental issues, stress, poor diet, and so many other factors can all create underlying stress in your sleep pattern, making it very difficult to fall asleep, stay asleep, or have the much needed deep sleep for a solid night of rest. Read the rest of this entry »

There are many stories on the internet (and elsewhere) about people who take ambien expecting a good night’s sleep, and then wake up to discover that they have been eating peanut-butter sandwiches during the night — personally, the only way I’d ever eat a peanut-butter sandwich is if I was asleep and then had no memory of it afterwards. Taste is personal. But back to the urban myths. It seems that people have been sleepwaking their way through routine tasks and putting themselves in danger by trying to cook or, worse, driving a car. The FDA, never a body to be panicked into anything, last year required all drugs that are classed as “sedative hypnotics” to carry a warning. It’s a strange kind of warning. It goes, “If you take this drug, don’t walk around when you’re alseep.” But you get the idea. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2006 in the US, the clinical gold standard for insomnia was controlled-release Ambien. Millions of prescriptions a year were and are written. Moving across the Atlantic, the situation is no less “impressive”. According to the latest figures, there are around half a million people in England taking sleeping pills at any one time. The National Health Service records show 820,000 prescriptions are written every month. It is estimated that some 330,000 pills are taken every day. This would make insomnia the most common psychological condition in Britain. Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps I am growing more cynical, but every time I see a new piece of research only lasting one or two years, I wonder why it stopped early. I suppose it is always a balancing act. If you have a specific hypothesis, evidence for or against should be apparent fairly quickly. Read the rest of this entry »

I am constantly amazed (and sometimes amused) by the “science” of futurology. This is, as the name suggests, the willingness of experts to predict what will happen in the future by applying probabilities and other scientific methods. Basically, it is extrapolation from the current state of affairs and, as such, much beloved of those who engage in the “art” of marketing. Read the rest of this entry »

  Three letters can be deceptively simple. DUI = driving under the influence [of] alcohol or some other substance that prevents you driving safely. In the USA, ambien is the best-selling sleeping pill. So should it be DUIA “driving under the influence of ambien”? In real-world CSI labs around the US, ambien makes the top-ten of most identified “drugs” found in people arrested for traffic offences. Fascinatingly, some drivers claim this was “sleep driving”. Read the rest of this entry »

  Talk to any sports team manager and you hear the same answer. Once you are at the top, everyone else is gunning for you. They want the satisfaction of beating you, to prove they are better than you. You have to play your best all the time. One slip-up and you are yesterday’s team, the has-beens. Read the rest of this entry »

When they do not suffer from the disease or disorder, people can be very selfish, not to say, callous. The same problems swirl around the politics of “Libertarianism” in the USA, where some activities such as drug and substance abuse are considered “victimless”. The argument is made that what people choose to do to themselves should not be the concern of the criminal law. Such arguments essentially ignore the real costs to the public exchequer to support the notion that the general tax rate can be reduced. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, yes, I am going to talk about a new book. Appropriately enough for a site devoted to Ambien, it is Insomniac by Gayle Greene (published by the University of California Press in March, 2008 — 978-0-520-24630-0). So here is an autobiographical take on what it is like to live with insomnia by a woman who ought to know. Gayle Greene has the distinction of being a non-professional member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). She wins this prize even though not a medical researcher because she is the “patient representative” on the board of the American Insomnia Association, which operates within the AASM’s umbrella. In her spare time (sic), she labours at the Scripps College, Claremont California as Professor of Literature and Women’s Studies. This latest tome (quite heavy at 520 pages) adds to her impressive resume of academic publications. Read the rest of this entry »

Now here is a question for you. When you reach for a tablet of Ambien, do you have performance anxiety — in the nicest possible sense of the words, of course? It seems that a number of people are finding it difficult to swallow their Ambiens (and others medications). In some, this is a psychological problem. Because the patient resents the idea of being medicated, the resistance is increasingly demonstrated through an inability to swallow the “offending” pills. In others, it is a taste issue. Even though the tablet may only be on the tongue for a few seconds, this is enough to trigger a gagging response. Read the rest of this entry »