• Question: Can medications cause excessive sleepiness or sleeplessness?

    Asked by anon-189208 to Rachel, Yousef, Petrina, Jason on 9 Nov 2018. This question was also asked by anon-189300, anon-189174.
    • Photo: Rachel Sharman

      Rachel Sharman answered on 9 Nov 2018:

      Great question Alberto11! Any drug that crosses the blood brain barrier has the potential to cause sleepiness or sleeplessness. My old job was to test drugs to see what they did to sleep.
      We mostly worked on sleeping pills making sure they wore of by the morning.
      Some medications can even alter the type of sleep you get. In major depression, some people start to have too much REM sleep. Some anti-depressants reduce the amount of REM sleep a person has.

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