(09-03-12) Sleeping pills linked to 460 percent increase in sudden death

by Jonathan Benson, staff writer

(NaturalNews) If you take pharmaceutical sleeping pills to help alleviate
insomnia, you are very likely putting yourself at serious risk of developing
cancer or even dying. A new study published in BMJ Open, an open-access journal
that is part of the British Medical Journal family of publications, suggests
that patients who take various benzodiazepines, non-benzodiazepines,
barbiturates and sedative antihistamines for insomnia are 4.6 times more likely
to die, on average, within two-and-a-half years than those who do not take
these drugs.

Researchers from the Jackson Hole Center for Preventive Medicine in Wyoming
and the Scripps Clinic Viterbi Family Sleep Center in California evaluated and
analyzed data on more than 33,000 patients for their study, of which nearly one
third were taking sleeping drugs like temazepam, zopiclone, zolpidem, or
zaleplon for their insomnia. After adjusting for other risk factors, the team
found that within roughly two years after beginning sleeping pill drug
regimens, one in 16 sleeping pill patients died, while only one in 80 patients
not taking these drugs died.

Depending on how often insomnia patients took their sleeping drugs, the
overall death risk was as much as 530 percent higher than the death rate for
non-users, which clearly illustrates a definitive and causal link between
sleeping pills and increased mortality. And besides having an increased risk of
suffering sudden death, sleeping pill users were also found to have a roughly
35 percent elevated risk of developing cancer compared to non-users as well.

"The meager benefits of hypnotics, as critically reviewed by groups without
financial interest, would not justify substantial risks," said the researchers.
"Rough order-of-magnitude estimates at the end of the supplemental files
suggest that in 2010, hypnotics (sleeping pills) may have been associated with
320,000 to 507,000 excess deaths in the USA alone."

You can review the full study for free here:
http://bmjopen.bmj.com

While patients with insomnia have a number of alternative treatment options
available at their disposal that do not involve dangerous hypnotic drugs, many
of them are unaware of this. A 2006 study published in the Journal of the
American Medical Association, for instance, found that simple cognitive
behavior therapy is more effective than hypnotic drugs at alleviating insomnia
(http://www.naturalnews.com/019492.html).

There are also a number of dietary and herbal remedies that can help remedy
sleeping problems, including valerian root, peppermint, chamomile,
passionflower, lavender, the amino acid L-glutamine, 5-hydroxytryptophan, and
the hormone melatonin, to name just a few (http://www.naturalnews.
com/025065_sleep_natural_herb.html).

Sources for this article include:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17177005

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