Junk Food Turns Public Villain as Power Shifts in Washington
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The new Trump administration could be coming for your snacks.
For years, the federal government has steered clear of regulating junk food, fast food, and ultra-processed food.
Now attitudes are changing. Some members of President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle are gearing up to battle “Big Food,” or the companies that make most of the food and beverages consumed in the United States. Nominees for top health agencies are taking aim at ultra-processed foods that account for an estimated 70% of the nation’s food supply. Based on recent statements, a variety of potential politically charged policy options to regulate ultra-processed food may land on the Trump team menu, including warning labels, changes to agribusiness subsidies, and limits on which products consumers can buy with government food aid.
The push to reform the American diet is being driven largely by conservatives who have taken up the cause that has long been a darling of the left. Trump supporters such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose controversial nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services still faces Senate confirmation, are embracing a concept that champions natural foods and alternative medicine. It’s a movement they’ve dubbed “MAHA,” or Make America Healthy Again. Their interest has created momentum because their goals have fairly broad bipartisan support even amid a bitterly divided Congress in which lawmakers from both sides of the aisle focused on the issue last year.
It’s likely to be a pitched battle because the food industry wields immense political influence and has successfully thwarted previous efforts to regulate its products or marketing. The category of “food processing and sales companies,” which includes Tyson Foods and Nestle SA, tallied $26.7 million in spending on lobbying in 2024, according to OpenSecrets. That’s up from almost $10 million in 1998.
“They have been absolutely instrumental and highly, highly successful at delaying any regulatory effectiveness in America,” said Laura Schmidt, a health policy professor at the University of California-San Francisco. “It really does feel like there needs to be a moment of reckoning here where people start asking the question, ‘Why do we have to live like this?’”
“Ultra-processed food” is a widely used term that means different things to different people and is used to describe items ranging from sodas to many frozen meals. These products often contain added fats, starches, and sugars, among other things. Researchers say consumption of ultra-processed foods is linked — in varying levels of intensity — to chronic conditions like diabetes, cancer, mental health problems, and early death.
Nutrition and health leaders are optimistic that a reckoning is already underway. Kennedy has pledged to remove processed foods from school lunches, restrict certain food additives such as dyes in cereal, and shift federal agricultural subsidies away from commodity crops widely used in ultra-processed foods.
The intensifying focus in Washington has triggered a new level of interest on the legal front as lawyers explore cases to take on major foodmakers for selling products they say result in chronic disease.
Bryce Martinez, now 18, filed a lawsuit in December against almost a dozen foodmakers such as Kraft Heinz, The Coca-Cola Co., and Nestle USA. He developed diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease by age 16, and is seeking to hold them accountable for his illnesses. According to the suit, filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, the companies knew or should have known ultra-processed foods were harmful and addictive.
The lawsuit noted that Martinez grew up eating heavily advertised, brand-name foods that are staples of the American diet — sugary soft drinks, Cheerios and Lucky Charms, Skittles and Snickers, frozen and packaged dinners, just to name a few.
Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Kraft Heinz didn’t return emails seeking comment for this article. The Consumer Brands Association, a trade association for makers of consumer packaged goods, disputed the allegations.
“Attempting to classify foods as unhealthy simply because they are processed, or demonizing food by ignoring its full nutrient content, misleads consumers and exacerbates health disparities,” said Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of product policy, in a statement.
Other law firms are on the hunt for children or adults who believe they were harmed by consuming ultra-processed foods, increasing the likelihood of lawsuits.
One Indiana personal injury firm says on its website that “we are actively investigating ultra processed food (UPF) cases.” Trial attorneys in Texas also are looking into possible legal action against the federal regulators they say have failed to police ultra-processed foods.
“If you or your child have suffered health problems that your doctor has linked directly to the consumption of ultra-processed foods, we want to hear your story,” they say on their website.
Meanwhile, the FDA on Jan. 14 announced it is proposing to require a front-of-package label to appear on most packaged foods to make information about a food’s saturated fat, sodium, and added sugar content easily visible to consumers.
And on Capitol Hill, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) are sounding the alarm over ultra-processed food. Sanders introduced legislation in 2024 that could lead to a federal ban on junk food advertising to children, a national education campaign, and labels on ultra-processed foods that say the products aren’t recommended for children. Booker cosigned the legislation along with Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.).
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a December hearing examining links between ultra-processed food and chronic disease during which FDA Commissioner Robert Califf called for more funding for research.
Food companies have tapped into “the same neural circuits that are involved in opioid addiction,” Califf said at the hearing.
Sanders, who presided over the hearing, said there’s “growing evidence” that “these foods are deliberately designed to be addictive,” and he asserted that ultra-processed foods have driven epidemics of diabetes and obesity, and hundreds of billions of dollars in medical expenses.
Research on food and addiction “has accumulated to the point where it’s reached a critical mass,” said Kelly Brownell, an emeritus professor at Stanford who is one of the editors of a scholarly handbook on the subject.
Attacks from three sides — lawyers, Congress, and the incoming Trump administration, all seemingly interested in taking up the fight — could lead to enough pressure to challenge Big Food and possibly spur better health outcomes in the U.S., which has the lowest life expectancy among high-income countries.
“Maybe getting rid of highly processed foods in some things could actually flip the switch pretty quickly in changing the percentage of the American public that are obese,” said Robert Redfield, a virologist who led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the previous Trump administration, in remarks at a December event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Claims that Big Food knowingly manufactured and sold addictive and harmful products resemble the claims leveled against Big Tobacco before the landmark $206 billion settlement was reached in 1998.
“These companies allegedly use the tobacco industry’s playbook to target children, especially Black and Hispanic children, with integrated marketing tie-ins with cartoons, toys, and games, along with social media advertising,” Rene Rocha, one of the lawyers at Morgan & Morgan representing Martinez, told KFF Health News.
The 148-page Martinez lawsuit against foodmakers draws from documents made public in litigation against tobacco companies that owned some of the biggest brands in the food industry.
Similar allegations were made against opioid manufacturers, distributors, and retailers before they agreed to pay tens of billions of dollars in a 2021 settlement with states.
The FDA ultimately put restrictions on the labeling and marketing of tobacco, and the opioid epidemic led to legislation that increased access to lifesaving medications to treat addiction.
But the Trump administration’s zeal in taking on Big Food may face unique challenges.
The ability of the FDA to impose regulation is hampered in part by funding. While the agency’s drug division collects industry user fees, its division of food relies on a more limited budget determined by Congress.
Change can take time because the agency moves at what some critics call a glacial pace. Last year, the FDA revoked a regulation allowing brominated vegetable oil in food products. The agency determined in 1970 that the additive was not generally recognized as safe.
Efforts to curtail the marketing of ultra-processed food could spur lawsuits alleging that any restrictions violate commercial speech protected by the First Amendment. And Kennedy — if he is confirmed as HHS secretary — may struggle to get support from a Republican-led Congress that champions less federal regulation and a president-elect who during his previous term served fast food in the White House.
“The question is, will RFK be able to make a difference?” said David L. Katz, a doctor who founded True Health Initiative, a nonprofit group that combats public health misinformation. “No prior administration has done much in this space, and RFK is linked to a particularly anti-regulatory administration.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. population is recognized as among the most obese in the world and has the highest rate of people with multiple chronic conditions among high-income countries.
“There is a big grassroots effort out there because of how sick we are,” said Jerold Mande, who served as deputy undersecretary for food safety at the Department of Agriculture from 2009 to 2011. “A big part of it is people shouldn’t be this sick this young in their lives. You’re lucky if you get to 18 without a chronic disease. It’s remarkable.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Spreading Mental Health Awareness
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
Request: more people need to be aware of suicidal tendencies and what they can do to ward them off
That’s certainly a very important topic! We’ll cover that properly in one of our Psychology Sunday editions. In the meantime, we’ll mention a previous special that we did, that was mostly about handling depression (in oneself or a loved one), and obviously there’s a degree of crossover:
The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need
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What does it mean to be transgender?
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Transgender media coverage has surged in recent years for a wide range of reasons. While there are more transgender television characters than ever before, hundreds of bills are targeting transgender people’s access to medical care, sports teams, gender-specific public spaces, and other institutions.
Despite the increase in conversation about the transgender community, public confusion around transgender identity remains.
Read on to learn more about what it means to be transgender and understand challenges transgender people may face.
What does it mean to be transgender?
Transgender—or “trans”—is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity or gender expression does not conform to their sex assigned at birth. People can discover they are trans at any age.
Gender identity refers to a person’s inner sense of being a woman, a man, neither, both, or something else entirely. Trans people who don’t feel like women or men might describe themselves as nonbinary, agender, genderqueer, or two-spirit, among other terms.
Gender expression describes the way a person communicates their gender through their appearance—such as their clothing or hairstyle—and behavior.
A person whose gender expression doesn’t conform to the expectations of their assigned sex may not identify as trans. The only way to know for sure if someone is trans is if they tell you.
Cisgender—or “cis”—describes people whose gender identities match the sex they were assigned at birth.
How long have transgender people existed?
Being trans isn’t new. Although the word “transgender” only dates back to the 1960s, people whose identities defy traditional gender expectations have existed across cultures throughout recorded history.
How many people are transgender?
A 2022 Williams Institute study estimates that 1.6 million people over the age of 13 identify as transgender in the United States.
Is being transgender a mental health condition?
No. Conveying and communicating about your gender in a way that feels authentic to you is a normal and necessary part of self-expression.
Social and legal stigma, bullying, discrimination, harassment, negative media messages, and barriers to gender-affirming medical care can cause psychological distress for trans people. This is especially true for trans people of color, who face significantly higher rates of violence, poverty, housing instability, and incarceration—but trans identity itself is not a mental health condition.
What is gender dysphoria?
Gender dysphoria describes a feeling of unease that some trans people experience when their perceived gender doesn’t match their gender identity, or their internal sense of gender. A 2021 study of trans adults pursuing gender-affirming medical care found that most participants started experiencing gender dysphoria by the time they were 7.
When trans people don’t receive the support they need to manage gender dysphoria, they may experience depression, anxiety, social isolation, suicidal ideation, substance use disorder, eating disorders, and self-injury.
How do trans people manage gender dysphoria?
Every trans person’s experience with gender dysphoria is unique. Some trans people may alleviate dysphoria by wearing gender-affirming clothing or by asking others to refer to them by a new name and use pronouns that accurately reflect their gender identity. The 2022 U.S. Trans Survey found that nearly all trans participants who lived as a different gender than the sex they were assigned at birth reported that they were more satisfied with their lives.
Some trans people may also manage dysphoria by pursuing medical transition, which may involve taking hormones and getting gender-affirming surgery.
Access to gender-affirming medical care has been shown to reduce the risk of depression and suicide among trans youth and adults.
To learn more about the trans community, visit resources from the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Trevor Project, PFLAG, and Planned Parenthood.
If you or anyone you know is considering suicide or self-harm or is anxious, depressed, upset, or needs to talk, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741. For international resources, here is a good place to begin.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Unlock Your Air-Fryer’s Potential!
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Unlock Your Air-Fryer’s Potential!
You know what they say:
“you get out of it what you put in”
…and in the case of an air-fryer, that’s very true!
More seriously:
A lot of people buy an air fryer for its health benefits and convenience, make fries a couple of times, and then mostly let it gather dust. But for those who want to unlock its potential, there’s plenty more it can do!
Let’s go over the basics first…
Isn’t it just a tiny convection oven?
Mechanically, yes. But the reason that it can be used to “air-fry” food rather than merely bake or roast the food is because of its tiny size allowing for much more rapid cooking at high temperatures.
On which note… If you’re shopping for an air-fryer:
- First of all, congratulations! You’re going to love it.
- Secondly: bigger is not better. If you go over more than about 4 liters capacity, then you don’t have an air-fryer; you have a convection oven. Which is great and all, but probably not what you wanted.
Are there health benefits beyond using less oil?
It also creates much less acrylamide than deep-frying starchy foods does. The jury is out on the health risks of acrylamide, but we can say with confidence: it’s not exactly a health food.
I tried it, but the food doesn’t cook or just burns!
The usual reason for this is either over-packing the fryer compartment (air needs to be able to circulate!), or not coating the contents in oil. The oil only needs to be a super-thin layer, but it does need to be there, or else again, you’re just baking things.
Two ways to get a super thin layer of oil on your food:
- (works for anything you can air-fry) spray the food with oil. You can buy spray-on oils at the grocery store (Fry-light and similar brands are great), or put oil in little spray bottle (of the kind that you might buy for haircare) yourself.
- (works with anything that can be shaken vigorously without harming it, e.g. root vegetables) chop the food, and put it in a tub (or a pan with a lid) with about a tablespoon of olive oil. Don’t worry if that looks like it’s not nearly enough—it will be! Now’s a great time to add your seasonings* too, by the way. Put the lid on, and holding the lid firmly in place, shake the tub/pan/whatever vigorously. Open it, and you’ll find the oil has now distributed itself into a very thin layer all over the food.
*About those seasonings…
Obviously not everything will go with everything, but some very healthful seasonings to consider adding are:
- Garlic minced/granules/powder (great for the heart and immune health)
- Black pepper (boosts absorption of other nutrients, and provides more benefits of its own than we can list here)
- Turmeric (slows aging and has anti-cancer properties)
- Cinnamon (great for the heart and has anti-inflammatory properties)
Garlic and black pepper can go with almost anything (and in this writer’s house, they usually do!)
Turmeric has a sweet nutty taste, and will add its color anything it touches. So if you want beautiful golden fries, perfect! If you don’t want yellow eggplant, maybe skip it.
Cinnamon is, of course, great as part of breakfast and dessert dishes
On which note, things most people don’t think of air-frying:
- Breakfast frittata—the healthy way!
- Omelets—no more accidental scrambled egg and you don’t have to babysit it! Just take out the tray that things normally sit on, and build it directly onto the (spray-oiled) bottom of the air-fryer pan. If you’re worried it’ll burn: a) it won’t, because the heat is coming from above, not below b) you can always use greaseproof paper or even a small heatproof plate
- French toast—again with no cooking skills required
- Fish cakes—make the patties as normal, spray-oil and lightly bread them
- Cauliflower bites—spray oil or do the pan-jiggle we described; for seasonings, we recommend adding smoked paprika and, if you like heat, your preferred kind of hot pepper! These are delicious, and an amazing healthy snack that feels like junk food.
- Falafel—make the balls as usual, spray-oil (do not jiggle violently; they won’t have the structural integrity for that) and air-fry!
- Calamari (vegan option: onion rings!)—cut the squid (or onions) into rings, and lightly coat in batter and refrigerate for about an hour before air-frying at the highest heat your fryer does. This is critical, because air-fryers don’t like wet things, and if you don’t refrigerate it and then use a high heat, the batter will just drip, and you don’t want that. But with those two tips, it’ll work just great.
Want more ideas?
Check out EatingWell’s 65+ Healthy Air-Fryer Recipes ← the recipes are right there, no need to fight one’s way to them in any fashion!
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How To Engage Your Whole Brain
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The Stroke Of Insight That Nobody Wants
This is Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. She’s a neuroanatomist, who, at the age of 37 (when she was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School), had what she refers to as her “stroke of insight”.
That is to say, she had a massive stroke, and after a major brain surgery to remove a clot the size of a golf ball, she spent the next 8 years re-learning to do everything.
Whereas previously she’d been busy mapping the brain to determine how cells communicate with each other, now she was busy mapping whether socks or shoes should go on first. Needless to say, she got an insight into neuroplasticity that few people would hope for.
What does she want us to know?
Dr. Taylor (now once again a successful scientist, lecturer, and author) advocates for “whole brain living”, which involves not taking parts of our brain for granted.
About those parts…
Dr. Taylor wants us to pay attention to all the parts regardless of size, ranging from the two hemispheres, all the way down to the billions of brain cells, and yet even further, to the “trillions of molecular geniuses”—because each brain cell is itself reliant on countless molecules of the many neurochemicals that make up our brain.
For a quick refresher on some of the key players in that latter category, see our Neurotransmitter Cheatsheet 😎
When it comes to the hemispheres, there has historically been a popular belief that these re divided into:
- The right brain: emotional, imaginative, creative, fluid feeling
- The left brain: intellectual, analytical, calculating, crystal thinking
…which is not true, anatomically speaking, because there are cells on both sides doing their part of both of these broad categories of brain processes.
However, Dr. Taylor found, while one hemisphere of her brain was much more damaged than the other, that nevertheless she could recover some functions more quickly than others, which, once she was able to resume her career, inspired her model of four distinct ways of cogitating that can be switched-between and played with or against each other:
Meet The Four Characters Inside Your Brain
Why this matters
As she was re-learning everything, the way forward was not quick or easy, and she also didn’t know where she was going, because for obvious reasons, she couldn’t remember, much less plan.
Looking backwards after her eventual full recovery, she noted a lot of things that she needed during that recovery, some of which she got and some of which she didn’t.
Most notably for her, she needed the right kind of support that would allow all four of the above “characters” as she puts it, to thrive and grow. And, when we say “grow” here we mean that literally, because of growing new brain cells to replace the lost ones (as well as the simple ongoing process of slowly replacing brain cells).
For more on growing new brain cells, by the way, see:
How To Grow New Brain Cells (At Any Age)
In order to achieve this in all of the required brain areas (i.e., and all of the required brain functions), she also wants us to know… drumroll please…
When to STFU
Specifically, the ability to silence parts of our brain that while useful in general, aren’t necessarily being useful right now. Since it’s very difficult to actively achieve a negative when it comes to brain-stuff (don’t think of an elephant), this means scheduling time for other parts of our brain to be louder. And that includes:
- scheduling time to feel (emotionally)
- scheduling time to feel (gut feelings)
- scheduling time to feel (kinesthetically)
…amongst others.
Note: those three are presented in that order, from least basic to most basic. And why? Because, clever beings that we are, we typically start from a position that’s not remotely basic, such as “overthinking”, for example. So, there’s a wind-down through thinking just the right amount, thinking through simpler concepts, feeling, noticing one’s feelings, noticing noticing one’s feelings, all the way down to what, kinesthetically, are we actually physically feeling.
❝It is interesting to note that although our limbic system fucntions throughout our lifetime, it does not mature. As a result, when our emotional “buttons” are pushed, we retain the ability to react to incoming stimulation as though we were a two-year-old, even when we are adults.❞
~ Dr. Jill Taylor
Of course, sometimes the above is not useful, which is why the ability to switch between brain modes is a very important and useful skill to develop.
And how do we do that? By practising. Which is something that it’s necessary to take up consciously, and pursue consistently. When children are at school, there are (hopefully, ideally) curricula set out to ensure they engage and train all parts of their brain. As adults, this does not tend to get the same amount of focus.
“Children’s brains are still developing”—indeed, and so are adult brains:
The Brain As A Work-In-Progress
Dr. Taylor had the uncommon experience of having to, in many ways, neurologically speaking, redo childhood. And having had a second run at it, she developed an appreciation of the process that most of us didn’t necessarily get when doing childhood just the once.
In other words: take the time to feel stuff; take the time to quiet down your chatty mind, take the time engage your senses, and take it seriously! Really notice, as though for the first time, what the texture of your carpet is like. Really notice, as though for the first time, what it feels like to swallow some water. Really notice, as though for the first time, what it feels like to experience joy—or sadness, or comfort, or anger, or peace. Exercise your imagination. Make some art (it doesn’t have to win awards; it just has to light up your brain!). Make music (again, it’s about wiring your brain in your body, not about outdoing Mozart in composition and/or performance). Make changes! Make your brain work in the ways it’s not in the habit of doing.
If you need a little help switching off parts of your brain that are being too active, so that you can better exercise other parts of your brain that might otherwise have been neglected, you might want to try:
Enjoy!
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How To Avoid Age-Related Macular Degeneration
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Avoiding Age-Related Macular Degeneration
Eye problems can strike at any age, but as we get older, it becomes a lot more likely. In particular, age-related macular degeneration is, as the name suggests, an age-bound disease.
Is there no escaping it, then?
The risk factors for age-related macular degeneration are as follows:
- Being over the age of 55 (can’t do much about this one)
- Being over the age of 65 (risk climbs sharply now)
- Having a genetic predisposition (can’t do much about this one)
- Having high cholesterol (this one we can tackle)
- Having cardiovascular disease (this one we can tackle)
- Smoking (so, just don’t)
Genes predispose; they don’t predetermine. Or to put it another way: genes load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger.
Preventative interventions against age-related macular degeneration
Prevention is better than a cure in general, and this especially goes for things like age-related macular degeneration, because the most common form of it has no known cure.
So first, look after your heart (because your heart feeds your eyes).
See also: The Mediterranean Diet
Next, eat to feed your eyes specifically. There’s a lot of research to show that lutein helps avoid age-related diseases in the eyes and the rest of the brain, too:
See also: Brain Food? The Eyes Have It
Do supplements help?
They can! There was a multiple-part landmark study by the National Eye Institute, a formula was developed that reduced the 5-year risk of intermediate disease progressing to late disease by 25–30%. It also reduced the risk of vision loss by 19%.
You can read about both parts of the study here:
Age-Related Eye Disease Studies (AREDS/AREDS2): major findings
As you can see, an improvement was made between the initial study and the second one, by replacing beta-carotene with lutein and zeaxanthin.
The AREDS2 formula contains:
- 500 mg vitamin C
- 180 mg vitamin E
- 80 mg zinc
- 10 mg lutein
- 2 mg copper
You can learn more about these supplements, and where to get them, here on the NEI’s corner of the official NIH website:
AREDS 2 Supplements for Age-Related Macular Degeneration
Take care of yourself!
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Safe Effective Sleep Aids For Seniors
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Safe Efective Sleep Aids For Seniors
Choosing a safe, effective sleep aid can be difficult, especially as we get older. Take for example this research review, which practically says, when it comes to drugs, “Nope nope nope nope nope, definitely not, we don’t know, wow no, useful in one (1) circumstance only, definitely not, fine if you must”:
Review of Safety and Efficacy of Sleep Medicines in Older Adults
Let’s break it down…
What’s not so great
Tranquilizers aren’t very healthy ways to get to sleep, and are generally only well-used as a last resort. The most common of these are benzodiazepines, which is the general family of drugs with names usually ending in –azepam and –azolam.
Their downsides are many, but perhaps their biggest is their tendency to induce tolerance, dependence, and addiction.
Non-benzo hypnotics aren’t fabulous either. Z-drugs such as zolpidem tartrate (popularly known by the brand name Ambien, amongst others), comes with warnings that it shouldn’t be prescribed if you have sleep apnea (i.e., one of the most common causes of insomnia), and should be used only with caution in patients who have depression or are elderly, as it may cause protracted daytime sedation and/or ataxia.
See also: Benzodiazepine and z-drug withdrawal
(and here’s a user-friendly US-based resource for benzodiazepine addiction specifically)
Antihistamines are commonly sold as over-the-counter sleep aids, because they can cause drowsiness, but a) they often don’t b) they may reduce your immune response that you may actually need for something. They’re still a lot safer than tranquilizers, though.
What about cannabis products?
We wrote about some of the myths and realities of cannabis use yesterday, but it does have some medical uses beyond pain relief, and use as a sleep aid is one of them—but there’s another caveat.
How it works: CBD, and especially THC, reduces REM sleep, causing you to spend longer in deep sleep. Deep sleep is more restorative and restful. And, if part of your sleep problem was nightmares, they can only occur during REM sleep, so you’ll be skipping those, too. However, REM sleep is also necessary for good brain health, and missing too much of it will result in cognitive impairment.
Opting for a CBD product that doesn’t contain THC may improve sleep with less (in fact, no known) risk of long-term impairment.
See: Cannabis, Cannabinoids, and Sleep: a Review of the Literature
Melatonin: a powerful helper with a good safety profile
We did a main feature on this recently, so we won’t take up too much space here, but suffice it to say: melatonin is our body’s own natural sleep hormone, and our body is good at scrubbing it when we see white/blue light (so, look at such if you feel groggy upon awakening, and it should clear up quickly), so that and its very short elimination half-life again make it quite safe.
Unlike tranquilizers, we don’t develop a tolerance to it, let alone dependence or addiction, and unlike cannabis, it doesn’t produce long-term adverse effects (after all, our brains are supposed to have melatonin in them every night). You can read our previous main feature (including a link to get melatonin, if you want) here:
Melatonin: A Safe Natural Sleep Supplement
Herbal options: which really work?
Valerian? Probably not, but it seems safe to try. Data on this is very inconsistent, and many studies supporting it had poor methodology. Shinjyo et al. also hypothesized that the inconsistency may be due to the highly variable quality of the supplements, and lack of regulation, as they are provided “based on traditional use only”.
Chamomile? Given the fame of chamomile tea as a soothing, relaxing bedtime drink, there’s surprisingly little research out there for this specifically (as opposed to other medicinal features of chamomile, of which there are plenty).
But here’s one study that found it helped significantly:
The effects of chamomile extract on sleep quality among elderly people: A clinical trial
Unlike valerian, which is often sold as tablets, chamomile is most often sold as a herbal preparation for making chamomile tea, so the quality is probably quite consistent. You can also easily grow your own in most places!
Technological interventions
We may not have sci-fi style regeneration alcoves just yet, but white noise machines, or better yet, pink noise machines, help:
White Noise Is Good; Pink Noise Is Better
Note: the noise machine can be a literal physical device purchased to do that (most often sold as for babies, but babies aren’t the only ones who need to sleep!), but it can also just be your phone playing an appropriate audio file (there are apps available) or YouTube video.
We reviewed some sleep apps; you might like those too:
The Head-To-Head Of Google and Apple’s Top Apps For Getting Your Head Down
Enjoy, and rest well!
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