Health tips for better life

Looking around the journals published so far in 2010, it’s clear the research community is finally beginning to challenge the assumption that America should be medicated. If you listen to the pharmaceutical industry and the doctors who are paid to stand up and promote drugs as the best treatment for any disorder, you will hear a consistent pattern of propaganda. All our products have the FDA seal of approval. The clinical trials show our products are safe and effective. The health insurance industry pays most of the price for our products. Take our pills and get better. Indeed, when it comes to the top-selling sleeping pills, there are record numbers of prescriptions being written by doctors. The reason? Well, its not hard to suspect stress levels are increasing thanks to the recession. Unemployment is high. Credit levels have been reduced, There are foreclosures in every neighborhood. That’s bound to make sleep more difficult. What’s curious about the new records being set in the number of prescriptions is the additional financial burden this places on families when they can least afford it, and the implied assumption that sleeping pills can cure the underlying social and economic problems causing the stress.

The Journal of the American Medical Association reports talk therapy is more effective than sleeping pills. The research team gave the participants sleeping pills alongside therapy sessions and measured which had the better outcome. Because the talk asked why people were finding it difficult to sleep and discussed ways of resolving problems, people with the therapy sessions had better sleep than those on pills. This follows on research testing the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy which teaches people how to change their habit patterns to restore sleep. Therapists encourage people to avoid naps during the day, adopt a set routine for going to bed, and physically change the bedroom to minimize light and noise that might disturb sleep. When combined with techniques to address the cause of stress and relax, CBT has consistently been found to outperform sleeping pills.

When you look at the statistics, there can be little doubt we use too many sleeping pills. Add in the increasing use of online pharmacies which supply drugs without the need for a prescription, and the scale of reliance on sleeping pills is almost certainly worse than we imagine. Why should we care? Because all the sleeping pills on the market can cause dependence. As people continue to take them, tolerance builds and the pills actually become less effective. Increasing the dose confirms the dependence and can lead to unwanted side effects. Yes, ambien is one of the better pills and there are fewer problems with its use, but if your insomnia has been disrupting your life for six months or more, you should consider undergoing therapy first. CBT is clearly the best. To help you focus during this learning period, your doctor may offer the use of a sleeping pill. If you decide to accept, ambien is the best but you should only take it for a few weeks at low dose. The long-term restoration of sleep is going to come from the therapy. Although this is a short-term cost to meet, your life will improve with natural sleep and your finances will be better of without having to buy sleeping pills for the rest of your life.

Putting aside all the arguments about whether people should get so anxious, the practical reality is that they do. If this seriously disrupts their ability to lead normal lives, then something should be done. Common humanity requires that society makes reasonable provision for their treatment. The pharmaceutical industry would have us believe drugs are the best answer to all our problems and, when it comes to dealing with anxiety disorders, our doctors have a big choise of them. We start of with antidepressants. Yes, the name apparently suggests their function is limited to treating depression, but they can be just as useful in treating anxiety disorders. So now your doctor decides which medication to try out on you. There are the SSRIs and the tricyclics, and do not forget the MAOIs. Then we get into the anti-anxiety drugs, most often derived from the benzodiazepines. If those do not take your fancy, there are always the beta-blockers. The cabinet in your bathroom can be filled to overflowing (subject to deciding whether all these options are covered by your health plan). But, there is one inconvenient truth. All the independent research evidence (that’s the research not paid for by the pharmaceutical industry) shows psychotherapy to be more effective than medication. The problem with trying to treat an emotional problem with a pill is there cannot be a conversation about why you are feeling the emotion and how you are going to deal with its consequences. Talking through the problems with a mental health specialist has the best success record in restoring quality of life and avoiding a relapse into an anxiety state. For a start, it treats you as a human being. You become the focus of attention. People listen to you and advise you on how to improve the quality of your life. In the current healthcare market, you see your doctor for a few minutes, collect a prescription and pick up the bill on the way out. People respond well when they believe their interests are being taken seriously. Their treatment is progressed rapidly if the advice they receive is seen to be useful. There is no point in advising people out of books. This has to be a hands-on approach to changing each person’s attitudes and habits. The best form of psychotherapy is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). “Cognitive” because you want people to understand their emotional responses to different situations. Only if they understand why they feel anxious can they begin the process of changing their responses. “Behavioral” because the therapist will train people to change the way they behave. This means forcing people to confront the situations in which they feel anxious or fearful, and teaching them how to react more positively. CBT usually lasts over a period of about twelve weeks. For most people, it works best on a one-to-one basis but, in cases of social phobia, part of the training can be in groups to help people become more used to social gatherings. Before starting on the course, it is useful for people to take xanax. This brings the anxiety levels down and provides a window of opportunity when they may learn new habits. But, for the majority of people, the use of xanax should be quickly tapered off. The aim is to enable people to respond more confidently without having to rely on a drug. Only then can people actually begin to feel confident about their own abilities rather than as people propped up by pills.