What Causes Sleeplessness After Having Valium?

Posted on Tue, 17 Feb 2015

Question: My wife has MS. She is currently taking hydrocodone, tizanidine and some valium. She gets maybe 1 - 2 hours sleep a night and thats all. She has a quiet room with temperature contolled bed and music and books available. Nothing works. The prescriptions she is taking all have drowsiness as a side effect - yet she cant sleep more than a hour or so with no sleeping during the day. Whats going on??

Answered by Dr. Ravi Soni (51 minutes later)

Brief Answer:
You have other options when it comes to medication.

Detailed Answer:
Hi, thanks for writing through HCM.

I have read your query and understood your concerns.

How much valium she is on? Any other sedative drugs she is receiving?

If she is not sleeping enough with benzodiazepines then she can be given other psychotropic drugs which causes sedation as a side effect.

She must be having severe pain that is disturbing the sleep. She need further evaluation about the management of pain.

Drugs that can be the options for sleep are quetiapine, trazodone, zopiclone, eszopiclone etc.

She also needs a psychiatric evaluation because severe depression is common in patients of MS. Depression can cause sleep disturbances in general.

Hope I have answered your query. If you have further query then I shall be happy to help.

Wish you good health.
Regards,
Dr Ravi Soni

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Vinay Bhardwaj