http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkldFczgwIg
These drowsiness-inducing medications all seem indispensable for maintaining sleep & controlling sleep threats like overactive bladder or congested sinuses, when you suffer insomnia. But sedation is not sleep, even if it appears more "knocked out". Welcome to anticholinergic medications polypharmacy - the very common unwitting use of multiple harmless-seeming OTC and low-dose anticholinergic medications for sleep: antihistamines like Restavit, overactive-bladder antimuscarinics to reduce night-time urinating, low-dose Amitryptaline. All memory-disrupting, so the question arises: what are they doing to REM sleep?
Well, it so happens that anticholinergic drugs suppress and disrupt rapid eye movement (REM) sleep by blocking acetylcholine, needed to trigger and maintain dream sleep. This leads to a delayed start to REM sleep, less total time spent in REM, and impacts on memory processing. Remember, REM sleep is important for memory consolidation and emotion regulation. So is the sedation worth it, longer term?
The harmless sleep aids that increase dementia risk & erode memory