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Safe Effective Sleep Aids For Seniors
Plus: what a daily one-minute plank can do for you
The 10almonds Team
October 01, 2023
Today’s almonds have been activated by:
Loading Screen Tip: as the month draws to a close, take a moment to ask yourself what went well and worked for you this month—and is there anything you could have done better?
Now’s a great time to set goals and plan habits for October!
⏰ IN A RUSH?
Today’s 30-Second Summary
If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:
Choosing a safe, effective sleep aid can be difficult, especially as we get older.
Tranquilizers have many dangerous side-effects, and are addictive. That especially includes the most common kind, benzodiazepines, which is the general family of drugs with names usually ending in -azepam and -azolam.
Non-benzo hypnotics, typically “z-drugs” such as zolpidem tartrate (which you might know by the brand name Ambien, amongst others) aren’t considered as dangerous, but they too come with a stack of contraindications, including that they shouldn’t be prescribed in cases of sleep apnea, and should be used only with caution by the elderly.
CBD and THC can help by extending the most restorative “deep sleep” phase of sleep, though the use of THC comes at a cost of long-term impairment.
Melatonin is our body’s natural sleep hormone, and is generally considered safe and effective for most people.
Valerian root is a popular folk medicine, with very inconsistent data, and it’s typically unregulated and sold “based on traditional use only”.
Chamomile, a plant with many well-founded medicinal properties, has surprisingly little research into its benefits for sleep, but we did find research showing a significant improvement when enjoyed by the elderly as a sleep aid.
In the category of technological interventions: white noise is good; pink noise is better
Sleep-tracking apps, which often also offer white or pink noise generation as an included feature, can help too.
The conditions associated with untreated menopause can range from the inconvenient (e.g. mood swings) to the potentially life-threatening (e.g. heart palpitations)
There are at least 30 distinct symptoms that have been identified as being related to the menopause, yet often they get hand-waved away.
Today’s sponsor, Wellcore, is offering an at-home test kit to help take your menopausal healthcare into your own hands, and find out what is responsible for what—and then enjoy treatment, if appropriate.
Read on to learn about these things and more…
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
How a daily one-minute plank can transform your body
Planking menu:
🛌 MAIN FEATURE
Safe Efective Sleep Aids For Seniors
Choosing a safe, effective sleep aid can be difficult, especially as we get older. Take for example this research review, which practically says, when it comes to drugs, “Nope nope nope nope nope, definitely not, we don’t know, wow no, useful in one (1) circumstance only, definitely not, fine if you must”:
Let’s break it down…
What’s not so great
Tranquilizers aren’t very healthy ways to get to sleep, and are generally only well-used as a last resort. The most common of these are benzodiazepines, which is the general family of drugs with names usually ending in -azepam and -azolam.
Their downsides are many, but perhaps their biggest is their tendency to induce tolerance, dependence, and addiction.
Non-benzo hypnotics aren’t fabulous either. Z-drugs such as zolpidem tartrate (popularly known by the brand name Ambien, amongst others), comes with warnings that it shouldn’t be prescribed if you have sleep apnea (i.e., one of the most common causes of insomnia), and should be used only with caution in patients who have depression or are elderly, as it may cause protracted daytime sedation and/or ataxia.
See also: Benzodiazepine and z-drug withdrawal
Antihistamines are commonly sold as over-the-counter sleep aids, because they can cause drowsiness, but a) they often don’t b) they may reduce your immune response that you may actually need for something. They’re still a lot safer than tranquilizers, though.
What about cannabis products?
We wrote about some of the myths and realities of cannabis use yesterday, but it does have some medical uses beyond pain relief, and use as a sleep aid is one of them—but there’s another caveat.
How it works: CBD, and especially THC, reduces REM sleep, causing you to spend longer in deep sleep. Deep sleep is more restorative and restful. And, if part of your sleep problem was nightmares, they can only occur during REM sleep, so you’ll be skipping those, too. However, REM sleep is also necessary for good brain health, and missing too much of it will result in cognitive impairment.
Opting for a CBD product that doesn’t contain THC may improve sleep with less (in fact, no known) risk of long-term impairment.
Melatonin: a powerful helper with a good safety profile
We did a main feature on this recently, so we won’t take up too much space here, but suffice it to say: melatonin is our body’s own natural sleep hormone, and our body is good at scrubbing it when we see white/blue light (so, look at such if you feel groggy upon awakening, and it should clear up quickly), so that and its very short elimination half-life again make it quite safe.
Unlike tranquilizers, we don’t develop a tolerance to it, let alone dependence or addiction, and unlike cannabis, it doesn’t produce long-term adverse effects (after all, our brains are supposed to have melatonin in them every night). You can read our previous main feature (including a link to get melatonin, if you want) here:
Herbal options: which really work?
Valerian? Probably not, but it seems safe to try. Data on this is very inconsistent, and many studies supporting it had poor methodology. Shinjyo et al. also hypothesized that the inconsistency may be due to the highly variable quality of the supplements, and lack of regulation, as they are provided “based on traditional use only”.
Chamomile? Given the fame of chamomile tea as a soothing, relaxing bedtime drink, there’s surprisingly little research out there for this specifically (as opposed to other medicinal features of chamomile, of which there are plenty).
But here’s one study that found it helped significantly:
Unlike valerian, which is often sold as tablets, chamomile is most often sold as a herbal preparation for making chamomile tea, so the quality is probably quite consistent. You can also easily grow your own in most places!
Technological interventions
We may not have sci-fi style regeneration alcoves just yet, but white noise machines, or better yet, pink noise machines, help:
Note: the noise machine can be a literal physical device purchased to do that (most often sold as for babies, but babies aren’t the only ones who need to sleep!), but it can also just be your phone playing an appropriate audio file (there are apps available) or YouTube video.
We reviewed some sleep apps; you might like those too:
Enjoy, and rest well!
❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE
Wellcore | Personalized Menopausal Healthcare
People tend to know about hot flashes, but did you know there are more than 30 symptoms associated with menopause? Maybe you knew about weight gain and bone density loss, but night sweats and heart palpitations?
The conditions associated with untreated menopause can range from the inconvenient to the potentially life-threatening.
And yet, many people are left to guess at what symptoms might mean, or worse, simply ignore them.
Wellcore believes in doing better. To make diagnosis and treatment much more accessible to everyone, they offer an at-home testing kit. They’ll then analyze the results, and offer appropriate hormone therapy themselves if you want it (there are many benefits).
Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free
🌎 AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
New AI model improves accuracy of tumor removal in breast cancer surgery
Hospitalized COVID-19 patients face triple risk of multi-organ damage, study reveals
Women face more barriers to cardiac rehabilitation than men
Future-proof vaccine candidate protects against wide range of coronaviruses
Study: most patients prescribed fewer opioids after surgery satisfied with pain control
Kombucha tea shows promise in lowering blood sugar levels for type 2 diabetics
Traumatic life events may directly increase your risk for dementia
More to come tomorrow!
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
The Obesity Code - Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss – by Dr. Jason Fung
Firstly, if you have already read Dr. Fung's other book, The Diabetes Code, which we reviewed a little while ago, you can probably skip this one. It has mostly the same information, presented with a different focus.
While The Diabetes Code assumes you are diabetic, or prediabetic, or concerned about avoiding/reversing those conditions, The Obesity Code assumes you are obese, or heading in that direction, or otherwise are concerned about avoiding/reversing obesity.
What it's not, though, is a weight loss book. Will it help if you want to lose weight? Yes, absolutely. But there is no talk here of weight loss goals, nor any motivational coaching, nor week-by-week plans, etc.
Instead, it's more an informative textbook. With exactly the sort of philosophy we like here at 10almonds: putting information into people's hands, so everyone can make the best decisions for themselves, rather than blindly following someone else's program.
Dr. Fung explains why various dieting approaches don't work, and how we can work around such things as our genetics, as well as most external factors except for poverty. He also talks us through how to change our body's insulin response, and get our body working more like a lean machine and less like a larder for hard times.
Bottom line: this is a no-frills explanation of why your body does what it does when it comes to fat storage, and how to make it behave differently about that.
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Wishing you a wonderfully restorative weekend,
The 10almonds Team