In Your Experience, What Are The Pros And Cons Of Administering Sleeping Medication For Loved One With Alzheimers?
In Your Experience, What Are The Pros And Cons Of Administering Sleeping Medication For Loved One With Alzheimers?
We're already giving my mom Melatonin 10 mg, Prazosin 4 mg for blood pressure (has a known sedative effect), and Mirtazapine 15 mg.
Gosh, Cindie, that’s quite a cocktail. Jackie just has donepizil (Aricept) and levothyroxine. I also give her vit B12. I occasionally use a sleep tablet called zolpidem - it was first prescribed by the adult mental health folks. Like recently when her sleeping gets out of sync it is important to get her back otherwise everything else gets out of balance. The zolpidem is an elephant gun. Between 10/15 mins after taking her eyes shut and she is gone. The downside is that she doesn’t wake fresh. She’s like she has a hangover. So I use very sparingly - the lesser evil. She was once on Mirtazapine allegedly as anti-agitant but it made her ill so we stopped it. Cheers, Steve.
@A myALZteam Member, you asked for pros and cons and, of course there are both and the pros are obvious if the medication actually works. My husband had a period of not sleeping - or, it was actually not going to bed and walking for hours when he was exhausted. Increased medication made him very sleepy but he continued to refuse to go to bed and became very unstable and finally did have a minor fall. That was frightening and required an ER trip. There is the big con! However, prior to this he had been taking a smaller dose of Xanax (alprazolam) at night along with a couple of other things that had drowsiness side effects and that worked just fine until it didn't. So, perhaps worth a try but be prepared to be more watchful than ever.
A myALZte...
The only thing that I give my husband for sleeping is Clonazapan. It works well with no side affects. He gets up once in a while because he senses he is wet so I started using the night time depends with pads in them and also put a pad on top of the blue bed pad to keep it from getting to wet. This has helped and gives him and I a better night sleep.
I tried Nytol and it worked a treat but ... he didn't get up for the loo as usual and soaked disposables and bed! Same the second time so I am putting up with the night wandering.
my husband takes melatonin and tryptophan, it works fairly well and has no side effects
