Babbling in sleep is known to wake the deep in sleep, and there are many who are known to roam in sleep but the group that gets talked about the most are those who lie awake in sleepless disquiet. Popularly called as insomniacs, these sufferers are willing to toss around money and pop in magic pills that promise blissful sleep.
A novel study, courtesy the Norwegian researchers, has revealed that talking sessions also called cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT provides relief even to time-tested insomniacs, much better than sleeping pills. Essentially, CBT endeavors to alter certain behaviors and manner of thought flow, especially those that can impede sleep.Børge Sivertsen, PsyD, and colleagues at the University of Bergen in Norway unraveled the beneficial effects of this therapy when they studied 46 long-term insomniacs. The study groups were randomly administered CBT, Imovane, or placebo pills. Imovane is a commonly used sleep drug used in Europe, on the likes of Lunesta. The treatment was administered for six weeks. Six months after treatment, researchers gauged the sleep pattern of the group that underwent the treatment.
The finding revealed that the insomniacs who received CBT perceived a 10% reduction in the time spent on the bed awake, as against 20% before treatment. Importantly, this status improved six months after the treatment. There was no change in the sleeping pattern of sufferers who took the pill or placebo, who were awake in bed in just the same way as they were before the commencement of the study.
Expressing surprise, Sivertsen said "We expected CBT to be efficient, but we did not expect such strong differences between groups.”
CBT aficionado and director of the Kathryn Severyns Dement Sleep Disorders Center, Richard Simon Jr., MD, had the last word when he said "The main finding of this study is extraordinarily consistent with everything in the medical literature. The bottom line is that whenever one compares CBT to sleep medications, CBT is always at least as good if not better -- and, typically, the effect of CBT is longer lasting."
The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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