When I had trouble falling asleep, I would take a swig of Zzzquil, which worked perfectly every time. However, since then, my cardiologist told me to stop taking such products, so I turned to 5-5 mg tablets of melatonin in the evening to help induce drowsiness. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it did Melatonin is safer and has fewer side effects. One of them is vivid dreams. Five milligrams is a big dose. (I usually recommend 0.5 to 1 mg in my older patients.) Gas-X (simethicone) isn’t absorbed into the body and shouldn’t cause vivid dreams. A search found no reports of abnormal dreams with simethicone, so the melatonin was almost certainly causing the dreams. Maybe the Gas-X allowed you to sleep while the melatonin was still around enough to give you vivid dreams. A lot is going on here. First, I completely agree with your cardiologist that the sleep aid you were taking, like most over-the-counter sleep aids, contains diphenhydramine, an antihistamine that sedates some people. The problem with this medicine is that the quality of sleep isn’t good for many people. It also increases the risk of falls in older people and the risk of motor vehicle accidents in people who drive. It’s not a good choice for older adults. What is more common is a condition called factor V Leiden (FVL), which makes the body resistant to activated protein C, a natural anticoagulant. (Anticoagulants decrease blood clotting and are sometimes referred to as “blood thinners.”) So, the net effect of FVL is that it makes blood clots a little more likely. Many people have FVL, but most will not develop a blood clot.\
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Thursday, December 5, 2024