Posted by danr49 on February 14, 2007, at 11:36:36
In reply to Lunesta Ambien Sonata Rozerem for insomnia, posted by steve59 on February 13, 2007, at 20:20:46
The advantage of some of the newer prescription medications like Ambien CR you mentioned are that they do not interfere with sleep architecture as much as older drugs. This means that many of the older drugs (and particularly benadryl) cause one to spend less time in certain stages of sleep (e.g. REM and stage 4) and more in others so that you are not getting full quality sleep as you would if you could sleep the full amount of time naturally without drugs.
Just because something heavily "puts you out" doesn't mean it's giving you good sleep. Some nasty drugs that aren't used anymore really "put you out" and interfere with sleep architecture to the point that eight hours of sleep on one of them is equivalent to about three without it.
poster:danr49
thread:732549
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070213/msgs/732720.html