2 ms·
As long as you take it on an empty stomach and immediately go to bed and stay there until you fall asleep, it's reasonably safe What’s so, so, unfortunate is t
by WalterGR 5y ago
As long as you take it on an empty stomach and immediately go to bed and stay there until you fall asleep, it's reasonably safe
What’s so, so, unfortunate is that prescribing doctors don’t tell that to patients. So patients think, oh okay, I have problems falling asleep, so this drug that my physician prescribed will make me feel tired and at that point I’ll go to bed.
And so people stay awake until they feel tired.
Which is very much not how to take Ambien.
I worry that poor communication on the part of prescribing physicians will curse other potentially amazing medications.
- MrWiffles 5y agoSome prescribing physicians do; when I told the above story to a sleep specialist later (original prescribing doc was primary care, not a specialist), he said "what, he didn't tell you to immediately go right to bed when taking it?!" Dude was totally shocked. But yeah, you make a very good point here. I'd go so far as to say that anyone with sleep issues should skip the family practitioner/primary care doc and go straight to a sleep specialist right off the bat (assuming you don't need a referral for insurance; a potential non-issue outside the US). A lot of serious sleep disorders are misdiagnosed as general insomnia when they aren't insomnia whatsoever, but something more complicated (again, speaking from personal experience).