Sleep & Physical Disorders

Last edited | 10/22/2008

Written by Maurice M. Ohayon, MD, DSc, PhD

 

Smoking was found to be positively related to difficulties in initiating sleep and estimated sleep latency in an epidemiological study of 2,202 European subjects aged 20-45 years (14).

 Assessing the sleep and health of 869 individuals aged 14 to 84 years, Philips and Danner (65) found that cigarette smokers were significantly more likely than nonsmokers to report problems falling sleep, problems staying asleep, daytime sleepiness, minor accidents, depression and high daily caffeine intake.

Similarly, Wetter and Young (66) found in a sample of 3,516 adults that smoking was associated with difficulty initiating sleep and difficulty waking up. Excessive daytime sleepiness was related to smoking only for females, while nightmares and disturbing dreams were related to smoking only among males.
Another study reported that smokers were more likely to sleep fewer than six hours per night than nonsmokers (67).

Although often reported in clinical studies, the association between the use of antihypertensive drugs and insomnia was seldom reported in epidemiological studies.

In an epidemiological study of 8,000 Swedish subjects, Bardage & Isacson (68) reported that nearly 20% of the users of antihypertensive drugs reported side-effects; insomnia being one of those that had the strongest negative impact on health utility.

Another epidemiological study with 3,201 Swedish men reported different results. Men with hypertension had more frequently a complaint of insomnia, but those treated with beta-blockers had lower rates of insomnia (23).

Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant known for its important effects on sleep and wakefulness.

On sleep patterns, alcohol at bedtime accelerates the sleep onset, increases the amount of slow-wave sleep, decreases the amount of REM sleep and causes sleep disruption in the second half of the sleep period (69).

However, prolonged use of alcohol at bedtime loses its effects on sleep onset but sleep disruption remains.

Still, alcohol is often used as a sleeping aid in the general population (16,70).

An epidemiological study reported that about four out of 10 insomnia subjects medicated themselves with over-the-counter medications or alcohol (16).

Other medications, such as serotonergic reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), some neuroleptics, some antiparkinsonians and amphetamines, may all provoke insomnia among patients using these kinds of medications.

Hypnotics and anxiolytics may cause insomnia in several situations: a tolerance can be developed over time, causing the resurgence of insomnia; a rebound of insomnia upon discontinuation of the treatment and upon abrupt withdrawal.

Tolerance to hypnotics and anxiolytics has often been studied in the general population.
The results are the same: chronic users of hypnotics and anxiolytics show little or no difference when compared with non-treated insomnia subjects (71-73).