This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Ernest Hartmann, MD

JAMA. 1974;230(12):1680-1681.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Millions of persons take something to help them sleep, whether it be one of the traditional hypnotics, a shot of alcohol, a glass of milk, or one of the modern and supposedly proved pharmacological agents.

Recently, all-night polygraphic studies enabling the identification of the "infrastructure" of sleep have allowed a more detailed look at what occurs in the brain and body during a night of sleep with and without medication. One disturbing finding has been that whereas most hypnotic medications do indeed produce behavioral "sleep," they almost always distort the normal fine structure or architecture of sleep. This is true, unfortunately, of the benzodiazepines as well as of the barbiturates.

Although there are no hard data indicating that these alterations are detrimental, enough anecdotal evidence exists of a "drugged" or "groggy" feeling in the morning after taking sleeping pills to make one suspect that the altered drug-induced sleep may not . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Boston State Hospital Boston

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?