Sleeping pill how about that randy my time allowed you ran it’s okay i took that sleeping out here i took that sleeping pill last night perhaps did you take a look at stuff yeah it goes off yeah yeah but it might work apparently a bit too well because the fda recently cut the recommended dosage in half dr. joseph bojaja with the acquaintance sleep institute joining
Us with the reason behind all of this good morning to you good morning margins first of all what exactly is lunesta what’s it supposed to do so the nest is a pill that helps you get to sleep it’s in a class we called hypnotics or the technical term is benzodiazepine receptor agonist vz ras for our lingo what it does is it’s an engineer drug that has less side
Effects from drugs like valium it does help you get to sleep it is it does work quite well so now the fda is cutting the recommended dosage in half correct wow there’s that drug comes in one two and three milligrams strengths we had had a starting dosage for most patients about two milligrams margie what’s happened is as their recalibrating what are the morning
Side effects what are the concerns in the morning if you’re on your drug and it’s working great it doesn’t affect you at all but as physicians work with their patients to start an initial dose especially in a patient who hasn’t been on any medication in the past what was found was that in the morning some of those patients would have a little more side effects more
Sleepiness and there’s concerns about getting up and driving mm-hmm and so forth so they’re recommending starting at one milligram instead of two i mean i assume it’s different by each person but how long did the drug sting in your system well this this drug there’s two effects one is the peak effect and then in that peak effect will determine how much lags over
Later in the day so the official recommendation for this particular product is that you need to be able to stay in bed for at least seven hours but remember the peak of the drug so is going to be if it’s higher then by the time you get up the amount of drugs still in your system will be somewhat higher so that’s what they’re trying to effect here lower starting
Dose slightly lower peak less side effects in the morning yeah i mean you prescribe sleep aids i mean sure how long should you expect to sleep and how do you know if you’re impaired by your sleep aid sure that’s that that is actually the operative question huh what is the idea of impairment so a couple things one you should always discuss first of all with your
Physician most importantly secondly with whoever is the other person in your household so am i acting unusually any memory impairment am i doing things that i don’t remember that we call that antegrade amnesia so are those things happening or do you feel a little bit drunken or a little sleepy i had a patient yesterday who was telling me that she felt fatigued and
Sleepy in the morning on her sleep a so she wanted to alter that so those those are important things to discuss with your physician yeah i mean those are things that you can actually do is just say okay i’m seeing it so you don’t really need the fda to say when you can as the doctors say yeah i think we need to cut back on that or increase it correct it is on us
You’re exactly right and that it’s important to have that conversation and that that evaluation of your physician but what they’re trying to do here is get people to do live by the dictum that we always do which is start low and go slow i think it’s a good way to go firstly for everything all right dr. joseph ojq margie sleep institute we appreciate it as always john
Transcribed from video
Sleep Aid Change, FDA decreases dosage amount for Lunesta By Clayton Sleep
