{"id":196,"date":"2011-03-24T12:04:44","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T19:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.PsychologyLounge.com\/?p=196"},"modified":"2016-09-18T12:34:03","modified_gmt":"2016-09-18T19:34:03","slug":"want-to-sleep-better-get-brief-cbt-i-therapy-for-sleep-instead-of-sleeping-pills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.PsychologyLounge.com\/want-to-sleep-better-get-brief-cbt-i-therapy-for-sleep-instead-of-sleeping-pills\/","title":{"rendered":"Want to Sleep Better? Get Brief CBT-I Therapy for Sleep Instead of Sleeping Pills"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>&#8220;To sleep&#8211;perchance to dream. Ay, there&#8217;s the rub&#8221;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The New York Times reported on a terrific study at the University of Pittsburgh,<a href=\"http:\/\/newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com\/2011\/03\/23\/simple-rules-for-better-sleep\/?src=me&amp;ref=homepage\"> looking at ultra short treatment of insomnia in the elderly<\/a>. According to the article roughly 1\/4 of older adults suffer from insomnia. The researchers streamlined an approach called CBT-I, which stands for cognitive behavioral therapy of insomnia.<\/p>\n<p>There were only two sessions of treatment, totaling about 90 minutes. There were also two brief follow-up phone calls, over the first month. They tested this brief treatment and 79 seniors with chronic insomnia.<\/p>\n<p>So what were the results of this study? They couldn&#8217;t have been very powerful, right?<\/p>\n<p>Wrong. Two thirds of the CBT-I group reported a clear improvement in sleep, compared with only 25% of the people in the control group. Even better, 55% were cured of their insomnia. And six months later the results were even better.<\/p>\n<p>So what was this magic treatment and the magic rules for curing insomnia? There were only four rules.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Spend only seven or eight hours in bed.<\/li>\n<li>Set your alarm and get up at the same time everyday.<\/li>\n<li>Never go to bed until you actually feel sleepy.<\/li>\n<li>If you are tossing and turning and can&#8217;t sleep, get out of bed and do something relaxing until you get sleepy again. Then go back to bed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are standard cognitive behavioral sleep hygiene rules. And they are very powerful. Although not mentioned in the study, a few other rules are also helpful.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Regular exercise performed no later than midday is also helpful.<\/li>\n<li>Reducing caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol all are helpful.<\/li>\n<li>Avoid all naps.<\/li>\n<li>Only use your bedroom for sleep and sex. Don&#8217;t watch TV or read in bed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So why isn&#8217;t this treatment widely available? Could it be because there isn&#8217;t a powerful drug lobby for sleeping pills pushing this very effective therapy?<\/p>\n<p>What is really tragic is that most seniors end up being prescribed sleeping pills for insomnia. And this is in spite of very clear data from research that shows that modern sleeping pills such as Ambien, Lunesta, or Sonata, have very minimal effects. On average they reduced the average time to fall asleep by 12.8 minutes compared to placebo, and increased the total sleeping time by only 11.4 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Patients who took older sleeping medications like Halcion and Restoril fell asleep 10 minutes faster, and slept 32 minutes longer.<\/p>\n<p>How can this be? Why is it that patients believe that sleeping pills are much more effective? The answer is very simple. All of these drugs produce a condition called anterograde amnesia. This means that you cannot form memories under the influence of these drugs. So you don&#8217;t remember tossing and turning.\u00a0 If you can&#8217;t remember tossing and turning even though you may have, then you perceive your sleep has been better. The drugs also tend to reduce anxiety, so people worry less about having insomnia, and thus feel better.<\/p>\n<p>The hazards of sleeping pills in older adults include cognitive impairment, poor balance, and an increased risk of falling. One study in the Journal of the American geriatrics Society found that even after being awake for two hours in the morning, elder adults who took Ambien the night before failed a simple balance test at the rate of 57% compared to 0% in the group who took placebo. This is pretty serious impairment. Interestingly enough, in the same study, even young adults who took Ambien showed impaired balance in the morning.<\/p>\n<p>So what are the key messages here?<\/p>\n<p>1. Even though sleeping pills give people a sense of perceived improvement in sleep, the actual improvement tends to be almost insignificant, especially with the newer and very expensive sleeping medications. The older medications increased sleep time a little better, but have more issues with addiction and tolerance. Side effects of these medications are potentially very worrisome, since they can cause cognitive impairment and increased falling which leads to injuries, especially in the elderly. Why risk these side effects for such small improvements in sleep quality?<\/p>\n<p>2. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia works better than sleeping pills, has no side effects, is cheaper in the long run, and has a lasting impact on sleep improvement.<\/p>\n<p>3. Most people who suffer insomnia will see their physician, who will prescribe sleeping pills. This is partly because of the lack of availability of cognitive behavioral treatment for insomnia. There are relatively few cognitive behavioral practitioners, and even fewer who regularly do CBT-I. We need to improve the availability of these treatments, and should follow in the footsteps of the University of Pittsburgh researchers in learning how to streamline these treatments. Most people don&#8217;t have the patience to spend 6 to 8 weeks in cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. Instead we need treatments that can be administered in a single week or two with some brief follow-up.<\/p>\n<p>4. CBT-I availability will always suffer from the fact that there is no powerful corporate interest backing it. There are no CBT-I sales reps going to doctors offices offering free samples of CBT-I for doctors to pass out to their patients. I don&#8217;t have a solution for this problem, but would be interested in hearing from my readers as to how we might more effectively promote effective and safe treatments such as CBT-I.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, now that I&#8217;ve written this, it&#8217;s time to trundle off to bed. As Hamlet said, &#8220;To sleep &#8212; perchance to dream. Ay, there&#8217;s the rub!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Copyright \u00a9 2010, 2011 Andrew Gottlieb, Ph.D. \/The Psychology Lounge\/TPL Productions<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;To sleep&#8211;perchance to dream. Ay, there&#8217;s the rub&#8221; The New York Times reported on a terrific study at the University of Pittsburgh, looking at ultra short treatment of insomnia in the elderly. According to the article roughly 1\/4 of older &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.PsychologyLounge.com\/want-to-sleep-better-get-brief-cbt-i-therapy-for-sleep-instead-of-sleeping-pills\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,18,106,5,17],"tags":[79,29,52,51,53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.PsychologyLounge.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.PsychologyLounge.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.PsychologyLounge.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.PsychologyLounge.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.PsychologyLounge.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.PsychologyLounge.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.PsychologyLounge.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.PsychologyLounge.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.PsychologyLounge.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}