NYT: Study Links Ambien Use to Unconscious Food Forays

[DeepModem Mom]

Study Links Ambien Use to Unconscious Food Forays


Illustration by the New York Times

By STEPHANIE SAUL
Published: March 14, 2006


The sleeping pill Ambien seems to unlock a primitive desire to eat in some patients, according to emerging medical case studies that describe how the drug's users sometimes sleepwalk into their kitchens, claw through their refrigerators like animals and consume calories ranging into the thousands.

The next morning, the night eaters remember nothing about their foraging. But they wake up to find telltale clues: mouthfuls of peanut butter, Tostitos in their beds, kitchen counters overflowing with flour, missing food, and even lighted ovens and stoves. Some are so embarrassed, they delay telling anyone, even as they gain weight.

"These people are hell-bent to eat," said Dr. Mark Mahowald, who is director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis and is researching the problem.

He and colleagues are preparing a scientific paper based on their findings that a sleep-related eating disorder is one of the unusual side effects showing up with the widespread use of Ambien. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., have made similar findings....

***

Spurred in part by consumer advertising, more than 26 million prescriptions for Ambien were dispensed in this country last year, an increase of 53 percent since 2001....


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14sleep.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


Edited to add link to NYT, "Safeguards When Using Ambien":

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/business/14ambienbox.html


Edited to add WP, "To Sleep, Perchance to . . . Walk"
Reports Raise Questions About Sleeping Pill Side Effect. Is Ambien Sleepwalking Understated?

By Martin F. Downs
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, March 14, 2006; Page HE01

The most prescribed sleep medication in the United States may be linked to episodes of sleepwalking and related strange and dangerous behaviors, experts say -- including incidents of nocturnal eating, phone conversations, shoplifting and even driving -- of which the subject has no memory.

Sleep specialists and researchers cite a growing though still inconclusive body of reports associating Sanofi-Aventis's drug Ambien with the incidents. More than 24 million prescriptions for Ambien were written in 2004.

Timothy Morgenthaler, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic Sleep Disorders Center in Rochester, Minn., says he has seen many cases of people who sleepwalk and sleep-eat after taking Ambien.

He described five such cases in a 2002 report in the journal Sleep Medicine. All those patients stopped having sleep-eating episodes when they discontinued Ambien, Morgenthaler said. Since then he has seen many similar cases, he said.

"I feel pretty comfortable that this is a real phenomenon," he said....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/13/AR2006031301317.html

[Mithras61]

1. AFter this article and the one last week on Ambien...

I'm just glad I sleep well enough to not need sleep aids. It sounds to me like they need to pull Ambien until they figure out :wtf: is going on (sleep driving/walking, sleep eating... next they'll be telling us that's what's wrong with W_rong).

[Atman]

2. I think this is a crock

Pharmaceutical companies are as cut throat as any mega-corp out there. I'd bet you a tray of midnight brownies that these stories are "negative PR" plants by a competitor. Hear me out...

My wife is an APRN, and three days a week she spends doing rounds in nursing homes. She is well versed in these drugs like Ambien and Lunestra...she prescribes these drugs, and she sees lots of patients who take them, whether she prescribed it or not. And she says she has never, ever seen anything remotely like this. As she puts it, if any of this is really happening at all, like the "sleep driving" on Ambien reported last week (coincidence? Another bad Ambien story, but none about Lunestra?), it is likely because of patients drinking while taking it, or ignoring the warning not to drive. Listen to the fast-talking at the end of the commercials...it's there. These drugs are designed to be taken before you hunker down for a full eight hours sleep. You don't take 'em if you're a little anxious and just need to snooze for a few hours.

One woman listed in the report claimed to have gained 100 lbs before she realized what was happening to her.

That nearly happened to me once, too! But it wasn't Ambien...it was something called "marriage."

Denial is an even more powerful drug than Ambien!

[Kolesar]

3. That's a thinker! ... eom

[KittyWampus]

The article mentions same might be happening with Lunestra & Sonata

but you've made a good point about Ambien being the name in the titles.

Part of this is linked to the heavy advertising for Ambien. It apparently is what most people request or are prescribed.

So, as article says, these are side effects of ALL related sleep medication.

[Atman]

11. Thanks

I think if this was a fair assessment, it should have spoken of the actual drug, zolpidem, and not singled out brand names. That is what has me suspicious. It is as if it was found that bananas were bad for you, and they only reported on Dole bananas being bad. It's just sloppy reporting.

[KittyWampus]

14. Atman, article also mentions Ambien is from a French pharmaceutical

so there may very well be other manufacturers trying to get bad press on their competition.

Kind of sad, all the way around.

[gulfcoastliberal]

16. Hmmm... look at what people habe done while on Xanax

I can believe this story. Xanax is one fucked up drug. Benzos in general are bad news.

[KurtNYC]

4. I see "driving" while asleep is also on the list

of documented side effects!

The reactions range from fairly benign sleepwalking episodes to hallucinations, violent outbursts and, most troubling of all, driving while asleep,...

Scary stuff really.

[Benhurst]

5. Gosh, now I feel sorry about all the mean things I've said about

Candy Crowley. I bet she's on Ambien and that's why she's so grotesquely fat.

I'm sorry Candy -- I didn't know.
:cry:

[Atman]

6. Wade through it if you can...

http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic4/ambien_cr_ad.htm

[Mithras61]

10. How rare is "rare"?

Central and peripheral nervous system: Frequent: ataxia, confusion, depression, dizziness, drowsiness, drugged feeling, euphoria, headache, insomnia, lethargy, lightheadedness, vertigo. Infrequent: abnormal dreams, agitation, amnesia, anxiety, decreased cognition, detached, difficulty concentrating, dysarthria, emotional lability, hallucination, hypoesthesia, illusion, leg cramps, migraine, nervousness, paresthesia, sleep disorder, sleeping (after daytime dosing), speech disorder, stupor, tremor. Rare: abnormal gait, abnormal thinking, aggressive reaction, apathy, appetite increased, decreased libido, delusion, dementia, depersonalization, dysphasia, feeling strange, hypokinesia, hypotonia, hysteria, intoxicated feeling, manic reaction, neuralgia, neuritis, neuropathy, neurosis, panic attacks, paresis, personality disorder, somnambulism, suicide attempts, tetany, yawning.

MY emphasis!

These are in the "rare" side effects category in this listing, but are unquestionably present. All this says (as I understand it) is that in their clinical trails (or at least the ones they published), <1% exhibited these symptoms. If the general population exhibits the reactions at the same rate (let's call it .5% for a real number to work with), and 100,000 people take Ambien, then 500 people will have one or more of these reactions, right?

How many people are currently taking Ambien? Does that give us enough people out there sleepwalking, sleep driving and (apparently) sleep eating that we should be concerned about it?


And by the way... how many IS enougth to be concerned about? It's apparently a frequent enough occurence that it's making news in several areas and police reports are being cited as well as the "just noide" aspect you referred to above...

[underpants]

7. I think some people vote on it too

there has to be SOME explanation

[DeepModem Mom]

8. Good one!

[grahamhgreen]

9. LOL!

[noonwitch]

12. I've never taken Ambien, yet I do the same thing sometimes

Not so much anymore, but I used wake up in the middle of the night and eat. I wouldn't remember it, but the next day, I would find candy wrappers in the cupboard drawer next to the fridge. Or a spoon in the freezer next to the ice cream tub. As I live alone, there's no one else who could have done it.

[winter999]

13. Same with me, but not with Ambien...

unless my reefer is laced with the stuff :)

[Trillo]

15. Now if they can just figure out how to train people

to do certain tasks while sonambulating, then employers will have the magic pill ... SleepWorkers!

Great profit potential! No need to pay them cause they don't remember working!

Current research is exploring the injection of RF nanochips in the motor-function brain areas....