How Do Sleeping Pills Help You Get to Sleep?

Introduction

Every night thousands of people across the United States and throughout the world have trouble falling asleep. Sometimes this is due to anxiety, other times just plain insomnia. The most common cure for this problem is taking sleeping pills. These pills can vary in strength from over the counter to prescription strength and in most cases provide relief to those needing sleep.

Cycles

To understand how a sleeping pill works, we first have to understand how the body cycles during a 24-hour period. The body has two different modes, asleep and awake. As the day wears on the body slowly converts itself over to asleep mode. This involves the release of a chemical from the pineal gland called melatonin. This causes yawning, blurry vision, relaxed muscles and a desire to close your eyes. Once the body has achieved full sleep mode, it goes through the night until awake mode kicks back in and the body slowly starts to wake back up. However, many people have a hard time adjusting from awake mode to asleep mode. This is where sleeping pills come in.

Melatonin

Where most people have a problem falling asleep has to do with the release of melatonin. Whether it's psychological or physical, the inability for the body to produce enough melatonin for sleep can end up in a night of restless semi-sleep, or just staying awake. Sleeping pills have a substance in them that mimics the effects of melatonin. Once it enters the body through the sleeping pill it will cause the exact same effects that melatonin does on the body, which helps you fall asleep.

Dangers

The higher the dose of a sleeping pill, the less the pineal gland needs to work to produce natural melatonin to help the body sleep. However, this can cause the body to become dependent on the medication to fall asleep. This is usually only the case with prescription pills, but may happen with the overuse of over the counter medications as well.