#Sleeping pills heavy sleep professional

Sometimes, athletes are using sleep aids to combat the effect of stimulants they are using too late in the evening, such as caffeine. “Players will use whatever they get - antihistamines, used for over the counter medication, they may use depression medications, but many times they use melatonin…these supplements are available in the US over the counter but they can also find doctors that prescribe this for them.”

This isn’t just an over-the-counter sleep aid - players are using, and becoming addicted to benzodiazepines, or medications like Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata, and others used to treat insomnia, Singh says. What Types of Medicines Are They Using and What Are the Dangers? Pain from injuries that make it difficult to be comfortable enough to sleep well.Inconsistent schedules, including training, games, and media commitments “at all hours”.The adrenaline high post-game, making it difficult to wind down.Travel and subsequent jet lag, and sleeping in a different environment such as hotel rooms.Stress of competition that can lead to anxiety, preventing sleep.Meeta Singh, a sleep doctor who consults for multiple NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, Olympic, and college sports teams, outlines some top reasons: There are both physical, logistical, and emotional reasons athletes turn to prescription sleeping pills, and sometimes end up addicted. In an moving and candid episode of the podcast “ The Overlap,” he gets real about just how severe the addiction was, without wanting to reveal dosages - “I had some scary moments.” He remembers considering retiring at 24 from “doing the thing I love,” a consideration he calls “heartbreaking” in retrospect. Dele Alli, an Everton midfielder, spent six weeks in rehab recovering from mental health concerns and a sleeping pill addiction, and seconded Bloom’s assertion that it’s a widespread issue amongst players. But, a new report BBC published recently, in which a psychotherapist reported “widespread” use of prescription sleeping pills amongst soccer (“football”) players in Europe, we are second guessing how easy it is for them to fall asleep.įormer Oxford United psychotherapist Gary Bloom stated that this type of addiction is much wider than people realize.

#Sleeping pills heavy sleep professional

All brands with an index score above 85 were given the top award while all those under 85 were given a secondary award.You’d think after running 7-10 miles per match, professional soccer players would be exhausted, and simply flop on their beds and pass right out at night. The type of award given was based on their index score. Category winners and brands that were statistically tied with the category winner were given an award as long as their nominal score was not below another brand that did not earn an award. Brands with differing ranks are sometimes awarded identical scores, but this is solely due to rounding of the scores to the nearest whole number. The results were then rescaled so that the winner in each category scored 100 points, while the other brands were scored along this 100-point scale. Brands that had less than 1,000 monthly searches, on average, were excluded.Įach top-ranked brand scored five points, each second-place product was awarded three points and third-place winners racked up one point each time a pharmacist voted for them. The brands included in the survey were selected based on the average monthly user search volume in the last year.

In the end, nearly 740 individual products were included in the comprehensive survey. Harris Poll, our partner for this year's Best OTC Medicine & Health Products, randomly assigned 352 pharmacists to rank their top three picks in each of the 99 over-the-counter product groups. Some people who use high doses or use it long term may suffer from liver damage, so talk with your doctor first. This herbal remedy is sold as an OTC sleep aid and has a proposed mechanism to increase chemicals that promote relaxation, although it hasn't been well-studied for treating insomnia. As a result, dietary supplements with melatonin have been used to treat various circadian rhythm sleep disorders such as advanced and delayed sleep phase disorders, jet lag and shift work disorder. Melatonin's ability to improve the sleep-wake cycle is well known. Magnesium has been shown to regulate the production of melatonin, a hormone that guides the body's sleep-wake cycle in addition to other chemicals related to relaxation. This mineral that's important for brain function may relax the mind and body to help initiate sleep. This popular decaffeinated tea contains an antioxidant, called apigenin, that has been shown to be mildly sedating.