The Dark Side of Sleep Medications
Natural Solutions for a Good Night’s Sleep

Sleep is one of your greatest healers, regenerating your brain along with every other part of your body. Research has shown that people who chronically experience a lack of sleep have reduced immunity, impaired work performance, and decreased memory; they don’t handle stress well, and they are more irritable and less happy than people who get enough sleep.

Today about 70 million Americans are affected by sleep problems. The National Institutes of Health has declared chronic insomnia a major public health problem, yet despite the huge amount of money being spent on sleep drugs—around 2.5 million dollars annually—prescription medications don’t address the underlying causes of insomnia. What’s worse is that these drugs produce serious side effects, including physical and psychological addiction, memory loss, headaches, behavioral and cognitive changes, and sickening hangovers.

One of the most common sleep medications, Ambien, is a central nervous system depressant that slows down normal brain function; to get off of Ambien, slowly decrease the drug over a period of two to three weeks and then discontinue taking it completely. Ambien is addictive; sudden discontinuation could cause rebound effects that include an increase in brain activity resulting in symptoms of nervousness and anxiety.

The good news is that natural medicine not only has solutions to help you get off of sleep medications such as Ambien, and to sleep well—it can also address the underlying conditions if you have chronic insomnia. These include unmanaged stress, hormonal changes (especially in women), and from a Chinese medicine perspective, imbalances in Qi. In my new book, Natural Choices for Women’s Health, I discuss in detail how you can treat sleep problems naturally; here are a few examples of my recommendations for how you can deal with the underlying causes:

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