What To Do About Disturbed Sleep: Nothing

Over the last five years, the New York Times reports, the use of sleep medications has increased by 60 percent. What could that mean? Well, it could mean that the number of Americans who have trouble getting a full night’s sleep has increased 60 percent. Or it could mean that the merchants of sleep medications have increased their marketing budgets by 60 percent. The Times leans toward the latter.
Written by psychiatrist Richard Friedman, this piece argues that while complaints about sleep deprivation are common, consequences are not: Most people who claim to be underslept appear to function perfectly well during the day. Which leads us to the question of What exactly is a good night’s sleep? Friedman suggests that it is not eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, as many people imagine it to be. Instead, he says, it is normal to drift in and out of sleep, waking every three to five hours–in a pattern that too many people believe to be troubled sleep. The real trouble, suggests Friedman, is "the meteoric rise in direct-to-consumer advertising, medications like
Ambien and Lunesta have become household names and seductive panaceas
that millions find hard to resist — even though a majority have no
serious sleep problem to repair."