MICHAEL THORPY, MD: One of the most important ones is controlling the time of going to bed and the time of getting up. But there are others, such as avoiding caffeine, avoiding smoking, not having a large meal before going to bed, exercising in the early evening, not late at night. Not napping during the daytime. Avoiding caffeinated products during the day, preferably. In the more serious and more difficult sleep problems, patients may then need to take medications.
ANNOUNCER: Improvements in prescription medications have minimized many unwanted side effects.
MICHAEL THORPY, MD: We initially started with the barbiturates, but they had a lot of problems with them and they had a lot of bad effects upon sleep stages and also they tended to be addictive. Then we moved to a new class called the benzodiazepines. These had some habit forming activities and tended to suppress sleep stages.
Even though people felt they were sleeping with the pills, their sleep was very different.
Fortunately, the newer sleep medications don't do that. And what they do is they allow the normal stages of sleep to occur And what they tend to do is just reduce the awakenings that occur during sleep at night.
RAFAEL PELAYO, MD: The point is for you to fall asleep easily, sleep through the night, wake up refreshed, full of energy.
ANNOUNCER: Whatever the strategy experts agree that lack of sleep is a problem that has an answer.
MICHAEL THORPY, MD: I think it's important for patients to realize that no matter what type of sleep problem they have, they can always be helped. There is always something that can be done.
