Word: ambien
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...remembering places and integrating other kinds of learning. The change affects the GABA neurotransmitter system. GABA, which is present in all mammals, inhibits or down-regulates nerve signals, as opposed to exciting them; this calming, relaxing system is activated by tranquilizers like Valium and the popular sleep drug Ambien, which attach to GABA receptors and act similarly to GABA. But at puberty, female mice experience a 700% increase in an unusual GABA receptor that helps calm the nervous system, except when under stress. In fact, this oddball receptor does the opposite: it responds to one of the body's stress...
...combat wakefulness, Americans filled more than 50 million prescriptions in 2008 for sleeping pills like Ambien and spent more than $600 million on over-the-counter sleep-inducing supplements such as melatonin and valerian root. Others seek medical treatment or psychological therapy to get to sleep, while the rest of us accept our nocturnal tossing and turning as just another of life's unavoidable nuisances and gulp an extra cup of coffee the next morning to compensate. (See the Year in Health, from...
These are questions that keep drug companies, as well as the television stations and magazines that subsist on their ad dollars, up at night (Ambien, anyone?). Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising by pharmaceutical companies has always been somewhat controversial. The U.S. is one of only two countries that permit it (New Zealand is the other). Critics claim that these advertisements encourage consumers to seek out overly expensive brand-name drugs from doctors. Their symptoms might not require such medications, and when they do, cheaper generic drugs may be available. Such marketing probably drives up overall health-care costs. More important...
Melatonin, as well as its analogs, have the added advantage of being less addictive and safer than other sleep-inducing medications. (The current study reported no immediate adverse effects of tasimelteon, though participants were not examined the following day.) In recent years, the popular prescription sleep aid Ambien, for example, has been linked to a range of bizarre sleepwalking incidents, including air rage. In a high-profile case in London in 2002, REM guitarist Peter Buck was cleared of assault and drunkenness charges stemming from his destructive rampage aboard a British Airways flight, after successfully claiming that his Ambien pill...
...zones - about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq were on such medications last fall. The Army estimates that authorized drug use splits roughly fifty-fifty between troops taking antidepressants - largely the class of drugs that includes Prozac and Zoloft - and those taking prescription sleeping pills like Ambien...