Insomnia a common medical complaint

Press, 10 October 1984, Page 27

Insomnia a common medical complaint

PA Wellington Difficulty sleeping was the second most common: medical complaint after! headache, said a visiting Australian psychiatrist. Professor Ross Kalucy told a seminar at the Wellington Clinical School that the production of drugs to promote, a good night’s sleep was one of the biggest and costliest components of the pharmaceutical industry. The drugs used had improved during the last decade, and were now more effective and had fewer side effects — but they were still

used more than necessary. Professor Kalucy, who chairs the psychiatry department at Flinders University in Adelaide, said that a change in lifestyle could help sleeping problems. For instance, a person who had trouble sleeping could avoid stimulants such as coffee, do regular exercise, cut down on alcohol intake, and eat foods which encouraged sleep. “The old nursing trick of giving hot milk is actually a good treatment,” he said. While the lifestyle changes might not solve the prime cause of insomnia, it

could make a person cope far better with lack of sleep. Professor Kalucy said that in many cases there was no detectable cause of insomnia, but often it resulted from depression, stress, alcohol or drug abuse, or diseases such as respiratory disorders or painful problems such as arthritis. He said that the amount of sleep people needed varied tremendously. Some made do with as little as four hours a night while others needed 10 hours.