Nitrous Oxide Sleep Study

Undergoing withdrawal from any drug is a very difficult process; sometimes it can even be dangerous. Withdrawal from alcohol is one of the more dangerous processes, as it can result in seizures and death. Comfort is probably the hardest thing to sustain when attempting to stop drug use. For this reason, numerous research studies have been carried out that have tried to find ways to make the process easier, if not completely improved. Unfortunately, there is no magic substance that stops the symptoms of withdrawal completely, if at all. For this reason, once I saw an article claiming nitrous oxide could improve sleep in alcoholics during withdrawal, my attention was immediately grabbed. The article I chose was “The Impacts of Nitrous Oxide Gas on Sleep Quality during Alcohol Withdrawal.”

Nitrous Oxide has been used mostly in dental offices, commonly referred to as laughing gas. Researchers also starting seeing potential benefits with sleep regulation. Therefore, they decided to test nitrous oxide in alcoholics going through withdrawal. Every participant had to volunteer, and were randomly assigned a treatment. Some individuals were given nitrous oxide, while the others were given either normal or medical air treatments. They measured quality of sleep by time spent sleeping, efficiency, and consistency of sleep cycle.

The results showed no variation in sleep quality between the nitrous oxide and oxygen treatments. Also, the placebo effect was ruled out as individuals receiving no treatment showed sleep qualities no worse than the treated groups. Therefore, although nitrous oxide can be an efficient anesthetic, it is not proven to have any impact on sleep quality in people undergoing drug withdrawal.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21470436