Sophie Coisne, deputy editor-in-chief at 60 million consumers, devotes a special special issue to these sleep disorders and their remedies. More than four in ten French people say they suffer from a sleep disorder. A worrying figure.
franceinfo: First of all, what do we call sleep disorders?
Sophie Coisne: It is a set of phenomena and pathologies that disrupt both the quality and quantity of sleep. It ranges from insomnia to sleep apnea, including repetitive nightmares, for example difficulty falling asleep. 30% of us experience regular insomnia. It’s huge.
And when we think of sleep disorders, we often think of medications. However, only a change in behavior is effective over time in the majority of cases. Do you have any examples?
We give a lot of examples in this issue. Wake up at set times, including weekends, don’t eat too late, do sports, but not in the evening. Also carefully calculate the time and duration of your nap. And then you have to know yourself well. Are we evening people or are we morning people? This is an important question to ask, because knowing it will change a lot of things in our behavior.
Medication is not the best way to get back to sleep, but occasionally, it can help. Of the more than 50 products you sift through, there are obviously sleeping pills. What are their advantages and what are their disadvantages?
Well, the advantage is obviously to get back to sleep quickly, but you can’t take them for life. It also causes a kind of drowsiness, sometimes during the day, it prevents you from driving often. They can also be difficult to stop. So be careful with these medications.
Do you have to be prescribed sleeping pills, or can you go to the pharmacy, ask your pharmacist for some and leave with a box without having presented a prescription at any time?
It depends. In fact, sleeping pills called benzodiazepines are prescription, indeed, but there are certain sleep products that are over the counter. This is particularly the case for antihistamines. So in fact, they are effective against allergies, but now they have marketing authorization to help with sleep. So these can be found over the counter in pharmacies, whatever the product, you should not take more than 28 days of sleeping pills, which unfortunately happens too often.
We also hear a lot about melatonin. What exactly is it, and most importantly, does it work?
So melatonin is a hormone that is normally secreted in the brain. It is a hormone that prepares you for sleep. It pushes our body every day to go into night mode. And therefore its contribution is interesting in the management of sleep disorders. It is also all the rage in food supplements, since over the last 10 years, there have been more than 1,400 food supplements declared to be based on melatonin, in France alone. So it’s huge.
Not all of them are interesting. The melatonin must be of a specific type. There are two types. It has to be in the right dose, and it has to be taken at the right time. If you suffer from insomnia, for example, you need a so-called slow-release melatonin, in a fairly high dose. And not all food supplements contain it.
There are also plants in infusion or as a food supplement, is it effective?
Ditch the chamomile, it has no proven effect on sleep. In fact, there is only one plant that stands out in the case of occasional sleep disorders, it is valerian. There are other plants which have what we call a traditional use and which have been used in the pharmacopoeia for a long time, such as passion flower for example, or the California poppy. But they still do not have as high a level of evidence of effectiveness as valerian.
So several tips. The first is to avoid mixtures of plants. Instead, go for a single plant in your product. Also ask the pharmacist if there is a risk of interactions of this plant with the treatments you usually take. Because these interactions happen regularly. And finally, you should definitely not give them to children, even if it says so on the box. We have found several products that claim to be for the whole family, even though they contain plants that are strictly not recommended for children under 12 years old.
