Excessive Sleepiness and Shift Work Sleep Disorder
Needless to say, people with insomnia won't be bright eyed and bushy-tailed the following day--whether they didn't sleep or whether they have sleeping pill residues in their system. In fact, they are actually suffering from the under-recognized and under-reported epidemic of Excessive Daytime Sleepiness. The main medical causes of EDS or ES are sleep apnea and narcolepsy, but last year Pharma rolled out a lifestyle cause caused "Shift Work Sleep Disorder." (No, it doesn't meant you can't sleep because your partner "shifts" in his or her sleep.) Ads for Provigil, a Schedule IV stimulant that treats EDS along with Nuvigil show a judge in his black robe, nodding out on the job with the headline "Struggling to Fight The Fog?"("Yo! Your Honor! I'm trying to plead!").
Of course wakefulness agents contribute to insomnia which contributes to wakefulness problems in a kind of perpetual pharmaceutical jet lag. In fact, the sleeping pill/alertness aid habit is so common, it threatens to create a new meaning for "AA"--Adderall and Ambien!
Insomnia that is Really Depression
Sleep disorders have also given a new lease on life to antidepressants. Doctors now prescribe more antidepressants for insomnia than they do sleeping pills, according to CNN. They also often combine them, since "insomnia and depression often occur together but which is the cause and which is the symptom is often unclear."
WebMD agrees with doubling the drugs. "Depressed patients with insomnia who were treated with both an antidepressant and a sleep medication fared better than those treated only with antidepressants," it writes. Ka-ching.
In fact, many of the new blockbuster diseases from adult ADHD and RA to fibromyalgia are treated with new drugs piled on top of existing ones that aren't working, a Pharma contrivance called polypharmacy. It brings to mind the store owner who says, "I know that 50 percent of my advertising is wasted--I just don't know which 50 percent." END
This article first appeared on alternet.org
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
