Did you know that in the United States, 2 out of 5 adults report insomnia symptoms every year? Insomnia occurs when a person has issues falling asleep or staying asleep. If you’ve ever had a period of days or weeks of interrupted, or disrupted sleep, you can relate to the sleepiness, slowed thinking, or other impairments people with insomnia face during the day after a night of little or no sleep.
Insomnia is tightly knit with sleep deprivation, and the result can have a deep impact on your physical and mental health. Sleep aids, along with sleep diagnostics have become the “go-to” for dealing with insomnia. These can include sleep study clinics, prescription medications, over-the-counter medicine (OTC), and natural or dietary supplements that can help you achieve the rest you need and aid you in bringing your sleep regimen back into a healthier zone.
Most sleep aids for insomnia make you sleep because they have a sedative, sometimes narcotic effect. Some have an immediate effect and make you sleepy quickly; others can have a prolonged effect to help you stay asleep through the night.
Types of Sleep Aids
Sleep aids can be classified based on how they work, chemical composition, and how they are regulated. These put sleep aids into three categories: prescription drugs, over-the-counter medications, and dietary supplements.
Prescription Drugs
All prescription drugs are approved by a government health regulator such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. Once the drug is approved, you need to have a doctor’s prescription to get the drug from the pharmacy. The drugs most often approved for insomnia include Z Drugs, Antidepressants, Melatonin receptor agonists, Benzodiazepines, and Orexin receptor antagonists.
Over-the-Counter Medications
You can buy this category of medications without a prescription. They don’t need the same level of review as prescription medications; however, they need to meet specific regulatory standards. Diphenhydramine and Doxylamine are the two broad groups of OTC sleep aids, and they have antihistamines as their key element. Typically, we use drugs with antihistamines to treat allergies, but they are also sold as sleeping pills because of their sedative effect.
Dietary and Natural Supplements
People use supplements for health reasons, but they are not formal medications. Because they are not medications, they don’t need to be approved by a government regulator.
Melatonin, Valerian, Kava, and even Magnesium are examples of dietary supplement sleep aids. Some manufacturers make their supplements with just one ingredient or a blend of ingredients. The difference in ingredients is why there are several sleep aids available on the market. Among the categories of sleep aid, dietary supplements tend to have the least amount of evidence backing their benefits.
Wellness products such as ambient or ‘white noise’ machines or downloadable apps, soft light globes, dark contrast eye masks, and noise cancelling or suppressing headphones all have volumes of consumer support and feedback as to their effectiveness in restoring healthy sleep.
Our final word on sleep is that it is natural. Our bodies and minds want to sleep, are designed to rest and restore and repair during sleep – so do your best not to be anxious about not sleeping. Be open to trying a variety of different approaches to help your body and mind reset and find their way back to a natural rhythm of sleep and wakefulness.
