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Ativan is a prescription drug used for excessive anxiety.
And GABA is a non-prescription amino-acid also used for anxiety. It works very well for some people and might be worth a try. You might want to take it in the early evening when you're starting to wind down and see how it does for you.
Diphenydramine has nothing - zilch, nada, to do with Alzheimer's. Anticholergenic action is reversible. Diphenhydramine is an anticholergenic. That means, if you take it, it will block something. If you don't take it, that thing will no longer be blocked.
If your mother had symptoms (which obviously she did), and if benadryl had *anything* to do with them, then she would have *stopped* having those symptoms, within a couple of days of not taking Benadryl anymore. Since she continued to get worse, clearly, Benadryl played absolutely no part, whatsoever, of any kind, for any reason, in your mother's illness. If anything, it helped her sleep while she was first experiencing the initial symptoms.
Just by including your "I don't know if this is related but..." story in this thread, you are *implying* that Benadryl might be something far more nefarious than anyone has ever experienced it being. Whether you intend to imply that or not, it's what you imply.
To repeat: diphenydramine, which is used as an antihistimine and a mild sedative which serves as a sleeping aid in certain brands, has NOTHING to do with alzheimer's.
Once again, I never claimed that tylenol pm caused mother to get AD--as with any complex disorder, there have been many factors, and I suspect that insulin resistance had a lot to do with it as well. But, when I read a study like this, I decide not to use this OTC drug anymore myself b/c who wants to wait for the final word? Medications found to cause long term cognitive impairment of aging brain or Use of anticholinergics and the risk of cognitive ... [Neurology. 2010] - PubMed - NCBI
Besides that, when mom's doc found out she was taking tylenol pm, he ordered her off of it starting immediately. Could be he was mostly worried about her doubling up on doses b/c of memory problems, but could there be other worries too?
I take a combo of Ativan and Benadyl,hey,whatever works,so far its been working about a yr or so. Only 1 mg of Ativan and only 1 benadryl,only drugs I take,oh,and an occasional Motrin when i have a back ache,etc.But not much. I have tinnitus and hearing loss,bad combo,so white noise has to be pretty loud and my hubs has to sleep too ya know. Gettin old stinks.
but at night, I find myself having racing, upsetting thoughts. Worried that I had my daughter too late in life and I'll die and leave her without a mother, worries about my parents who are getting older and have had some health issues, deeply upset about the fact that a family member and I had a falling out a couple years ago , etc.... I have toruble turing these thoughts off. Once I fall asleep I'm generally ok for the night...
I did try OTC PM meds but found they caused me to gain weight and that I was really foggy when I woke up.
GABA Calm or Gaba Sleep does just that. If you are anxious or cannot turn your thoughts off, this is the stuff to get.
No weight gain. No waking up foggy, tired, or anything other than rested.
Don't do this to yourself. If you are taking a prescription and it doesn't work
or has ugly side effects, stop taking it and try something else.
It's a low-dose fast-acting version of the same drug that Ambien is made out of. Ambien is just a brand name, and it has a couple of versions of its own, including controlled-release for people who have trouble falling -and- staying asleep.
This version sounds like it's mostly for people who don't have any trouble falling asleep, but who wake up in the middle of their sleep cycle and can't get back to sleep. That happens to me once in awhile, but it's usually only an hour before I have to get up, so Intermezzo wouldn't be useful for me.
I had a lot of luck with Lunesta. It's pretty expensive though ($200+) if insurance doesn't cover it. I tried Ambien once and had a crazy trip where I hallucinated and remember wading in my lake in the middle of the night (crazy!)
I actually don't recommend any sleeping pills, unless you only plan on being on them for a short amount of time. I was on Lunesta for seven years and it took two years to finally be sleeping pill free. Now I am so much more alert and feel a lot better.
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Gettin old stinks.
