America: A Nation Of Pill Poppers (Videos)

On TV, you often see commercials for this medication or that medication. The one thing that always catches my attention are all of the side effects they list. Sudden death, fatal heart attack, stroke. It is all said as if it is normal and nothing to be concerned about. We’ve inadvertently become a nation of pill popping junkies.  The use of sleeping has sky rocketed in recent years. Insomnia seems to be more abundant now. Technology may play a role in a sleep deprived nation.

Desperate for rest in a frenzied world, at least 8.6 million Americans take prescription sleeping pills to catch some Zzzs, according to the first federal health study to focus on actual use. Between 2005 and 2010, about 4 percent of U.S. adults aged 20 and older popped popular prescription drugs such as Lunesta and Ambien in the previous month, say government researchers who tracked 17,000 people to their homes and peered into their medicine cabinets. About a quarter of those studied suffered sleep problems serious enough to report to their doctors, said Yinong Chong, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“They told us they had difficulty getting to sleep, or they were waking up and couldn’t get back to sleep,” said Chong, whose study is based on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The report provides the latest evidence that a good night’s sleep is becoming more elusive. In 2008, market research from Thomson Reuters found that sleeping pill prescriptions had tripled among people younger than 45. The new study offers the first look at how many people are actually taking them, Chong said.