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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Observe these caveats if you use over-the-counter drugs or dietary supplements to help you sleep. Image: © Spauln/Getty ImagesIt's 2 a.m. and you can't sleep. Is it okay to take a nonprescription remedy? "They're not meant for the long term, but it may be okay for an occasional night of problems with sleep," says sleep expert Dr. Lawrence Epstein, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School.But which option should you reach for? Drugstore shelves are lined with a dizzying array of products promising a good night's sleep. They fall into two categories: nonprescription medications and dietary supplements.Nonprescription medicationsSleep medications that are available over the counter use antihistamines as their main active ingredient. Nytol, Sominex, and Unisom (the blue capsule form), for example, contain 25 to 50 milligrams (mg) of the antihistamine diphenhydramine per pill.Other over-the-counter sleep medications, such as Unisom SleepTabs, contain 25 mg per pill of an antihistamine called doxylamine succinate.These medications work by blocking certain brain chemicals, which can have a sedating effect. They are generally safe but come with some risks. "You tend to become tolerant of the effect relatively quickly, so they stop working for you. And we don't have a lot of long-term data about what happens if you use them for long periods of time," Dr. Epstein says. "And there is the potential that antihistamines may cause side effects in older adults, such as confusion and falls."Another risk: some over-the-counter sleep aids contain other medications. For example, Tylenol PM contains not only 25 mg of diphenhydramine but also 500 mg of acetaminophen, a pain reliever. You might not be aware of that if you're focused only on the sleep benefits of a medication.Dietary supplementsMany kinds of supplements claim to help you sleep. For example:Valerian root. The root of this tall, flowering plant is
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