Sleep eating and sleeping pills. It's not that uncommon and that's what I'm gonna
talk about today. I'm gonna talk about how to reduce the risk of that happening
to you after you take a sleeping pill. I'm dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist and on
this channel I talk about mental health education and self-improvement. Sleep
eating is just one example of what we call complex sleep behaviors. Other
examples can be things like sleep driving, sleep texting, sleep violence.
These behaviors are commonly connected to taking Ambien for sleep, but really it
can happen with any of the sleeping medications. So there are four things or
risk factors that can that can increase the chance that this can happen to you.
So number one would be having a history of sleepwalking. And sleepwalking is
something that we see more in children, but adults can do it as well. But if you
did it as a child, you have a greater risk of this happening again
or having you sleepwalk after you take a sleeping aid. Number two would be taking
more than the recommended amount and this is extremely easy to do with ambien
because ambien will often just stop working on you. I've seen people take it
one or two nights and then night 3 it's not working anymore.
So people will take just a little bit more. So here's the deal with ambien.
There's two doses: 5 milligrams and 10 milligrams. It's recommended that women
start with 5 milligrams and men can start with either 5 or 10. About 20% of
women metabolize ambien slower so therefore that's why the 5 milligram
dose is recommended for women. If you metabolize it slower, what can happen is
that when you wake up in the morning you can still have the lingering effects of
it. But 20 percent is still a minority, so
there's all these other women and people for whom five milligrams just doesn't
work so a person may start off with the five milligrams, that may work for a few
times and then they go up and go ahead and take the ten milligrams. Well ten
milligrams is the absolute maximum, no one should be taking more than ten
milligrams. But if it stops working which it often does so if you take 15 or 20
you increase the risk of these complex sleep behaviors. Now someone may say well
it didn't work at 10 milligrams so how can this make it worse for me when by
taking twenty, if twenty worked? It's not whether or not it works that gives you
the clue as to whether or not you'll have this problem. The drug is still in
your system even if it wasn't effective enough at making you sleep. So you take
20 milligrams you finally fall asleep but that's still too much of a dose.
Number three risk factor is taking too close to the time that you want to get
up. Its recommended for most sleeping pills that you give yourself at least
eight hours before you need to drive so if you need to head out the door at 8
o'clock in the morning you don't want to take ambien after midnight. And I've seen
it happen many times where someone says you know I don't really want to take
this pill tonight I want to see if I could sleep on my own. Two o'clock in the
morning they're still not asleep and it's like I gotta get a few hours of
sleep so they grab an ambien or they say okay I'll just take half so they take a
little less thinking okay all I need is about four or five hours of sleep so
I'll just take this little part of the pill. It doesn't work like that. The
regular ambien or zolpidem works for a certain amount of time regardless of the
absolute dose that you take. So you don't want to take really any sleeping pill
that's not designed to be short acting. If it's less than eight hours before you
need to get up and be driving because you can still wake up
and think that you're alert but still have too much of it in your system. There is
an exception with the ambien thing of there's a medication called Intermezzo.
It's the brand name but really it's zolpidem and it's a short-acting form of
it that's designed for middle-of-the-night wakening so that you
really only need to take you know you only need four hours before you need to
be out and about it's not quite as popular as regular sleep aids but that's
kind of an exception to this rule of not taking it too close to the time you need
to wake up and then a fourth main factor that can increase your risk of these
complex sleep behaviors is taking with taking your sleep aid with other
sedating medications. So for example if you take benzodiazepines for anxiety or
even muscle relaxers some of those can be very sedating and then you add on the
sleep agent on top of that it can just make you to where you can wake up in the
middle of the night and not be fully aware that of your surroundings and
be doing things in this kind of automatic way that we see with complex
sleep behaviors. Another thing that you you shouldn't combine the sleep aids
with is alcohol. So alcohol is another sedating agent that acts similarly to
the sleeping pills in your brain that is and so combining those two can also
increase your risk of the complex sleep behaviors. Now if this scares you and you
think well how do I know if this is gonna happen to me I didn't I haven't
slept as a child and I don't do those other things but does that mean I'm in
the clear? Well it doesn't necessarily mean you're in look clear. What you
want to do because it could really happen to anyone it's not like it's
super common I mean it's kind of common but it's not like this happens to
everyone. What you can do is if you live with someone or have a bed partner make
sure your bed partner is aware that you're gonna take a sleeping
pill tonight and look out for me doing anything weird or moving around in my
sleep. If it happens to you, chances are it will continue to happen so you should
let your doctor know because it's not the kind of thing that generally just
kind of goes away and then also you never know when you're gonna do
something that's not great like driving while you're sleeping. It's one thing to
sleep and eat but sleep driving takes it to a whole nother level. If you live
alone and don't have someone to look out for you one thing you can do is take
objects or things that could be dangerous for you to handle while you're
asleep you could put them away so put your keys in a drawer maybe or put put
it somewhere where it's not usually where you don't usually keep it because
with these complex sleep behaviors you're usually they're complex in the
sense that you're doing something that takes generally take some thought but it
is a somewhat on autopilot so putting something in a place that has a key and
you've got to go find the key and you're have to remember that you put the key
here there that that's a little bit too much to perform while you're in this
state it's usually things that are rote that you've been doing in a fairly
routine and you could just do without thinking much about. So you could hide
your keys somewhere that if you're awake you know where they are or maybe
even lock it away and you know where that key is to get your car keys or
knives you know if you keep your knives and a chopping block somewhere put it
away somewhere where it's not where you don't usually have it and then you could
take your sleeping medication and notice whether or not you see plates that have
been taken out of the cabinet or food on the table
or anything that's not in its usual place and that will give you a clue that
you've done something during the night and you weren't aware of it. If this
hasn't happened to you but you know someone for whom it has, share this video
with them. And if you like it, click the like button I'd appreciate it.