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my mother stopped taking the sleep aid and didn't tell me
— Priya Sharma (neuro + supplements, contributor)
Quick follow-up to the magnesium thread from a few weeks ago.
My mother started magnesium glycinate in early December. As of this week she's been on it for six months. I gave her a small bottle from my own supply and a pharmacist friend confirmed her cardiologist wouldn't object given her current meds. Standard 300mg before bed.
Six-month update: her sleep is meaningfully better. She's sleeping through the night more often than not — not every night, but more than half. Pre-magnesium she was waking 3-4 times a night and getting maybe 5 hours total. She is now in the 6.5–7 hour range on a typical night and the wakings are usually one short one around 3am.
I did not write this thread to talk about the magnesium. I wrote it because of something she did three weeks ago that I am still working out how to feel about.
She has been taking an OTC sleep aid for as long as I can remember. I'm going to be vague about the brand because the post isn't about the brand. The active ingredient is diphenhydramine. The literature on diphenhydramine and older adults is — let me put it this way — concerning enough that I have, over the years, raised it with her gently maybe four separate times. The Risacher 2016 work on anticholinergic burden and brain atrophy in older adults, the Coupland 2019 BMJ paper on long-term anticholinergic use and dementia risk, the general clinical preference for non-anticholinergic sleep options in patients over 65 — the data is not perfect but the data is real and it points the same way each time you look at it.
Each of the four times I raised it with her, she nodded politely and kept taking it.
Three weeks ago I was at her place and I went into the cabinet looking for something else and the bottle was not there. I asked her. She said "oh, I stopped taking those a while ago, I don't need them now." I asked when. She said "I don't know, three months maybe." She said it the way you say "oh, I switched dish soap brands."
I did not say "the magnesium worked." I did not pull up the diphenhydramine literature. I did not, and I want to be honest about this, even feel particularly vindicated. What I felt was something closer to guilt. Because I have spent fifteen years gently nudging her about that bottle. She was going to make the change at her own speed, on her own grounds, and the speed was — apparently — about three months after another supplement made her sleep ok enough that she didn't need it anymore.
Here is the part I'm working through, and I want to say this carefully because the audience for this forum has been generous about my softer posts and I do not want to push it. The four times I raised the diphenhydramine with my mother, I was right on the data. I was right on the pharmacology. I was right on the recommendation. I was, those four times, also pushing on an autonomy lever in a way that did not move her an inch. The thing that moved her was a different supplement working — not me being right about the old one.
I think there is a lesson in there about how change actually happens in the people we love. I am hesitant to write the lesson down because the lesson sounds, when I type it, like a generic line from a self-help book. So I'll just say what happened. I was right and I did not move her. She moved when something else made the move easy. The being-right was useless. The being-patient was — apparently — what worked, and patience is not a position I'm naturally comfortable with on health stuff.
The peer-reviewed me wants to put a citation at the end of this post. I'm not going to. The capsule isn't the medicine. I'm starting to understand what she meant.
— Marcus Webb (men's emotional wellness, contributor)
Read this twice.
The "being-right was useless, being-patient is what worked" line is the part. I've watched my brother — won't get into it, but I've watched him — make changes I'd been quietly hoping for, on his timeline, in response to things that had nothing to do with me. I used to take that personally. I don't anymore. Or I'm working on it.
What I'd add — and Aaron told me this once, the man does not tell me much — is that the people we love don't usually change because of the thing we said. They change because of the conditions around them. You being a steady presence for fifteen years was the conditions. The magnesium showed up. Your mom was ready. The lever was ready before the move was. That's not nothing.