Safe medications to take for sleep maintenance insomnia?

Therapeutic Efforts
#22

The ability to fall and stay asleep has definitely improved, but my sleep is still very strange. When I wake up, I have a vivid picture of what I was JUST dreaming. It is like the dream isn’t imbedded deep inside my brain, It’s like I’m not falling into deep sleep, and the dream is just on the surface. I dream every single night (before PFS I would dream only occasionally), and I remember my dreams every night.

At the worst, I would get about 3-4 hours of broken sleep every night for a few months, and I was completely exhausted during the day. I am still tired during the day now, but it is better.

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#23

How much sleep you get with lunesta?

Any risk concerns for it? Any sides?

Thanks

#24

When I wake up, I have a vivid picture of what I was JUST dreaming. It is like the dream isn’t imbedded deep inside my brain, It’s like I’m not falling into deep sleep, and the dream is just on the surface.

That’s a great way of explaining it, I experience the same thing. Also I often have dreams whilst being semi-awake, which never happened before, it’s like I constantly switch between being awake and being asleep. I think all of these symptoms suggest lower general sleep quality.

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#25

Yeah man, very similar here. When it was at the worst, I bought a fitbit and was tracking the sleep. I wasn’t getting very good sleep at all. I’ve since stopped obsessing over it as much and just letting it happen. When you get into a cycle where you have sleep anxiety, it makes all of it much worse. Sleep is supposed to naturally happen. So we need to let it.

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#26

It’s not strange. It’s just that you’re not sleeping deeply enough that you easily arouse out of REM sleep that leads to dream recall.

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#28

While I understand the need to favor short term benefits vs long term harm, Lunesta or zopiclone or z-drugs are something that are definitely not safe for sleep in the long term. They are pro-inflammatory, neurotoxic, and clastogenic. They are notorious for increasing risk of dementia, depression, infections leading to cancer, cancer, suicide, and all cause mortality with very little benefit.

Time after time large pop cohort studies and meta analyses have shown that z-drugs in particular even over most benzodiazepines which are already quite oncogenic, dramatically increase risk of certain cancers. In fact, the cancer risk of taking benzos and z-drugs even outweigh that of smoking. It’s one of life’s saddest truths that hypnotics pose such safety concerns.

Here’s a good review about hynoptics and their safety profile: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4890308/

#29

@Shellnyce you should look at this for daily usage of Lunesta. I was told the same by my doctors. PRN is ok but not nightly.

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