Please be very careful with those. I'll try to summarize my usual 3,000 word diatribe against using these types of medications too often. But I've personally witnessed the devastating effects on my own family so I have a personal stake in this information.
These are all powerful
anti-cholinergics. While this type of drug can serve a legitimate medical function it should be used only under medical supervision and never as sleep aids. These can hasten the onset of dementia and worsen the effects. The transition from responding normally to over-reacting to a single dose can occur unexpectedly. The older we get, the more dangerous the potential reactions.
For example, my mom ended up in the emergency room in 2012 after a single dose of a generic version of Nyquil. She had purchased this on her own at the local discount store, despite cautions from her geriatric general practitioner to take only the approved meds for allergies, congestion and coughing (mom's GP was fantastic and very well informed about potential side effects, better than some of mom's specialists). I usually scrutinized everything mom brought home from the store but I missed that one.
Those nighttime cough/cold/flu remedies are the worst kind of junk and should be labeled as poison rather than medicine. They contain at least three anti-cholinergics, all from the worst and lowest class of antihistamines and medications that should have been taken off the market years ago.
The combination created a potent hallucinatory effect on my mom. She never fully recovered. While she had days and sometimes weeks of relative clarity and independence, she began reacting more strongly and immediately to side effects from other medications. The worst was from a single dose of a medication prescribed by an ill-informed neurologist who, thankfully, is no longer with her health care system working with geriatric patients. The neurologist suggested the medication -- designed for patients with serious Parkinson's, which my mom did not have -- to control her minor but annoying essential tremor in one hand, which was inappropriate. She again hallucinated, this time for three days. The experience rapidly hastened her deterioration and should could no longer enjoy the independence she once had.
It was a frustrating experience for her and her visiting aides as well. Eventually we couldn't keep a visiting aide. I took over full time caregiver duties in early 2015. She's now in a nursing home full time. Doctors can find nothing organically wrong with her brain. She's had only a few minor TIAs -- mini-strokes -- not serious enough to account for the level of dementia. But I could recount for the specialists an incident-by-incident list of medications that precipitated her worsening dementia over the course of a decade.
And it began with careless use of OTC anti-cholinergics, including diphenhydramine, doxylamine succinate, chlorpheneramine, phenylephrine and others. And the prescription medication benztropine/benzatropine, often marketed as Cogentin.
To a lesser extent my grandmother had a similar experience. She insisted on routinely taking diphenhydramine and Unisom with doxylamine succinate as sleep aids. The effect on her was much more gradual. She simply slowed down very gradually, sleeping more, becoming less active, taking longer to finish the daily crossword puzzle, then not finishing it at all. She became unable to cope with routine bill paying, etc. I simply thought it was a routine process of aging.
She had surgery for a lower intestine biopsy at age 89 and never recovered. She hallucinated from the combination of anesthesia and morphine for pain and never fully recovered mentally or physically. She was unable to cooperate with basic physical therapy, was unfortunately neglected by nurses in an incompetent physical rehab center, and died a few months later in-home hospice.
While the effects were less severe than with my mom, I can't help wondering whether grandmother would have been better off using melatonin, valerian root or chamomile tea.
Frankly I'd rather lose some sleep than risk taking anti-cholinergics. Occasionally I'll take melatonin, and find I need less of it as I've gotten older.