SLEEPING pills could increase your risk of an early death, “staggering” research reveals.
People who took the drugs to nod off had a 55 per cent greater risk than those who kipped naturally — even if they slept for the same amount of time.
Their life expectancy was shorter by 5.3 years in men and 5.7 years in women.
The risk was more than double in sleeping pill users that have more than eight hours of shuteye, researchers found.
Yu Sun, of National Taiwan University, said: “Our results are staggering to say the least.
“Many people rely on sleeping pills to help them sleep, so it’s a shock to find that taking them may more than double your mortality risk.
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“We suggest avoiding using sleeping pills as a first-line of treatment for insomnia, and try other methods first.”
Around one in three Brits are thought to have insomnia, the medical term for difficulties with sleeping.
And nearly three quarters of the country – 7.5million adults – do not get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep every night, surveys show.
Getting less than that amount has been linked with a host of deadly health conditions, including an increased risk of dementia, heart disease and stroke.
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Sleeping pills are now rarely prescribed by GPs because they can have serious side effects and lead to addiction, according to the NHS.
They are only dished out for a few days or weeks at most if you have serious insomnia and other treatments haven’t worked.
The latest study, published in the Elsevier journal Sleep Health, looked at how dangerous they can be in terms of how long you live.
Researchers tracked death risk and life expectancy in 484,916 adults in Taiwan from 1994 to 2011.
They were split into four groups: sleeping four hours or less, sleeping four to six hours, sleeping six to eight hours, or sleeping eight hours or more.
Participants were also asked if they used prescription sleeping pills to nod off and how regularly they take them.
The drugs differ to over-the-counter sleeping aids like Nytol or valerian because they are much stronger and affect the brain in a different way, sometimes causing side effects like hallucinations and behaviour changes.
At under four hours, there was very little difference in death risk between those who did and didn’t take the pills.
But those who took the drugs were 32 per cent more likely to die early in the four to six hours group.
Independent experts questioned whether the increased risk across three sleep times was being caused by the pills directly.
Professor Kevin McConway, of the Open University, said: “The researchers found that people who took sleeping pills had a higher risk of early death.
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“That could be because the sleeping pills caused the increased risk, but that's far from the only possible explanation for the findings.
“Some other factor might, independently, cause people to be more likely to take sleeping pills, and also increase the risk of early death.”
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