What are the  best sleeping tablets during the menopause?

This is a question that I get asked a lot.

There are different types of medication that are used as sleeping tablets, In the past Benzodiazepines like nitrazepam and Temazepam used to be widely prescribed by Doctors but are not commonly used any more for insomnia mainly because they are highly addictive and have side effects.

More commonly used now  are similar drugs like zopliclone and zolpiderm. These aren't benzodiazepines but they do act in a similar way and again they have side effects and people have become dependent on them. 

A more startling fact about prescribed medication is that for every 25 prescriptions given for sleeping tablets one person dies!! This is known in medical literature as the number needed to kill. 

Some medication can be bought over the counter here in the uk such as sedating antihistamines such as Nytol .

These have a sedative effect at night when you first take them which diminishes after a few days of use. So what often happens is that people start to take more and more of them to get the same effect which is not a good idea.

Whilst they can help in the very short term they also can cause side effects such as headaches and drowsiness the next day plus a whole lot more side effects that you wouldn’t want. 

The other problem with sleeping tablets is that they disrupt sleep cycles so you don’t get a good nights sleep and may well feel very groggy the next day.

So unfortunately sleeping tablets are not really the answer to sleep problems.

The only thing that works in the long term is actually addressing what caused the sleep problem in the first place.

Commonly in women aged from 40 to 80 years old the sleep problem originated due to things like hot flashes, anxiety and pain.

Other things that cause problems are disruptions to your sleep routine and unrealistic expectations of how much sleep you actually need.

In the later years of our life we often don’t need 8 hours sleep and yet lots of us still think that we do. This sets up a pattern of trying to achieve the magic 8 hours so we spend more and more time in bed trying to catch up on sleep and this has a significant effect on our sleep going forward.

So if you are having a problem with sleep please don’t resort to sleeping tablets as a long term option. they are not the answer to your problem and will actually cause you more problems in the long run.