Before the end of the year, U.S. insomniacs will spend more than $170 million and gobble hundreds of millions of pills in their search for sleep. But will they really sleep better? Not always, says Dr. William Dement, head of Stanford University's Sleep Disorders Clinic. Last week Dement reported that sleeping pills can actually keep some people awake and cause emotional problems that may be worse than insomnia.
According to Dement, sleep researchers have found that the pills (which are usually barbiturates) interfere with those dream periods that normally occur about every 90 minutes and are accompanied by rapid eye movements. Denied...
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