Sleep problems and Insomnia in Serious Illness: A Podcast with Cathy Alessi and Brienne Miner
Insomnia. We\u2019ve all had it. Lying in bed at 2 am staring at the ceiling, getting anxious every hour that you\u2019re not falling asleep as you have a busy day coming up. Insomnia sucks.\xa0 Chronic insomnia sucks even more.
For those with serious illness, sleep problems and insomnia are all too common.\xa0 Instead of reflexively jumping to melatonin or ambien, on today's podcast we talk with two sleep experts, Cathy Alessi and Brienne Miner, about a better approach to sleep problems and insomnia.
We will go over epidemiology of insomnia, how these experts think about work up including which medications to avoid or discontinue, non-pharmacological treatment such as cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), and what if any is the role of pharmacological therapy in including newer agents like melatonin receptor agonists (ramelteon) and dual orexin receptor antagonists (like suvorexant).