Eight Hours. No Peeing. No Pain. If They Can Fix Bent Carrots, Why Can’t They Fix Sleep?

With all the pills they’ve developed to treat some pretty obscure conditions—WHIM (yes, that’s a real thing, involving warts), Stiff Person Disease, and Bent Carrot disease (technically Peyronie’s), you’d think someone could come up with a pill that helps seniors sleep through the night. Why can't they fix sleep?

created by ChatGPT 5/3/2025created by ChatGPT 5/3/2025

Only about 1,000 people in the U.S. have WHIM. Meanwhile, the NIH estimates more than 30 million seniors struggle with chronic sleep issues.

Now, I’m not minimizing those rare conditions. If you have one, you absolutely deserve treatment. But still… if they can solve a problem affecting 1,000 people, couldn’t they take a crack at something the size of “millions of exhausted seniors”?

Here’s what my dream pill would do:

• First, it would eliminate pain—hip pain, knee pain, back pain, and shoulder pain. Basically, whatever body part has decided to file a complaint that night.

• Second, it would eliminate the need to get up and pee. Not reduce. Eliminate. Let’s aim high.

• Third, it would selectively filter sound. No snoring. No CPAP machine noises. No cat yowling. No mysterious 5:15 a.m. maintenance truck that apparently only operates outside my window. But—and this is critical—it would still allow you to hear your spouse if they actually need help. This is a smart pill.

• And finally, it would not quietly destroy your liver, kidneys, brain, or balance, or give you dementia while it’s doing all this.

Is that too much to ask?

Sure, we have painkillers, but many are hard on the liver. NSAIDs can affect the kidneys. So now you’re not sleeping, and you’re worrying about your organs. There might be a connection between sleep aids and dementia, permanent brain fog.

Then there are the “Z-drugs,” designed to slow brain activity. For a while, they sounded promising—until the side effects started reading like a late-night comedy sketch: sleep driving, sleep shopping, sleep eating. Another ordered $10,000 worth of stuff online. One person reportedly dipped cigarettes in peanut butter. At that point, I think I’d rather be tired.

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Then there’s Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, which offers several well-meaning suggestions:

• Get up at the same time every day, even after a terrible night’s sleep. I try. But after a rough night, the snooze button and I have a very close relationship.

• Use the bed only for sleep and sex. Mostly fine… except for reading, cat cuddling, and what I call “the cat’s bed game,” which appears to be a nightly Olympic sport.

• If you can’t sleep, get up and go to another room until you’re sleepy. I know people who do this successfully. For me, walking back to bed wakes me up completely. So I’d just be pacing between rooms all night. On the plus side, I’d hit my step goal. On the minus side, there’s the ever-present risk of stepping on a slobbery cat toy. Nothing jolts you awake faster than that.

• Turn off screens 30–60 minutes before bed. This is where we part ways. We watch a couple of lighthearted game shows as our signal to wind down. Relaxing game show sounds like an oxymoron, but it clears the mind. Then I read in bed. Supposedly bad—but it works for me. I even switch to a black screen, so technically I’m being responsible. That counts, right?

Also, let’s talk about “a dark room.” Between nightlights for safe bathroom navigation, the blinking smoke alarm, the cat’s glowing water bowl, and my husband’s watch lighting up every time he moves… we’re not exactly in a cave.

Another thing these strategies tend to ignore: napping.

I’ve never been a napper, but lately I find myself dozing off after dinner, even during participative shows like Wheel of Fortune. Just a short nap, though. Maybe half a program. I wake up to see the bonus round!

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Some people—I won’t name names, but I live with one of them—turn that into a full two-hour siesta. And you know what? Countries that embrace siestas don’t seem nearly as obsessed with insomnia as we are.

But all these strategies overlook the two biggest barriers to sleep: Pain and peeing.

I can practically sleepwalk to the bathroom at this point, but by the time I get back into bed, I’m wide awake.

Then there’s the side-sleeping situation. I rotate like a rotisserie chicken because eventually one hip starts protesting. So I flip. Then the other hip files its complaint.

I’ve tried training myself to sleep on my back. My body has declined the offer.

I’ve tried meditation. Works great during the day. At night, after about four minutes of deep breathing, I start thinking, “Why am I not asleep yet?”—which is not a calming thought.

I’ve tried sleep apps. Mostly, I find them irritating. Although now that I think about it, maybe I need a hypnotist app. “You are getting sleepy… very sleepy…”

Which brings me back to my original point.

Big Pharma, if you’re listening: we don’t need a pill that makes us younger, thinner, or more energetic.

We just need one that lets us sleep through the night without pain, without peeing, and without waking up to discover we’ve ordered $10,000 worth of things we don’t remember buying.

Eight hours. That’s it.

You can keep the miracle cures—we’ll take the full night’s sleep.