Why can’t Trump take sleep meds?

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]If Donald Trump is sundowning, why can't we just give him sleep meds to make him sleep at night?

[00:00:07]It's an interesting question, and it's one that I've gotten in my comments from a couple of people. So, I thought I would address it. And the short answer is you can't it just won't work. And here's the longer answer. So, why would why can't we just give sleep medications to make people sleep when they might be sundowning or when they have dementia?

[00:00:26]We want them to be sleeping at night.

[00:00:28]And the biggest issue is that they won't work well because sundowning is not actually a primary sleep problem.

[00:00:35]It's it's this whole complex behavioral problem and a neurologic phenomenon that occurs related to brain deterioration and dementia. I've used the term suprachiasmatic nucleus before, that brain your brain's internal clock. So, your internal clock is the problem. The deterioration of that part of your brain is the issue. So, there aren't medications out there that allow you to kind of go against that internal clock.

[00:01:05]So, with the deterioration of the brain suprachiasmatic nucleus, that's the thing that's going to regulate arousal and circadian rhythms. It's going to regulate attention. It's going to regulate how you process the environment, things like it's sunny outside or it's dark outside. That must mean I should sleep. And so, you can't just give it a medication like a benzo.

[00:01:26]Benzodiazepines are typically given to support sleep.

[00:01:31]And things like lorazepam would be a common one. And you can actually have what's called a paradoxical reaction when you give someone who has sundowning behavior a benzo. And a paradoxical reaction is basically it does the exact opposite of what it should do. They make things much worse.

[00:01:49]And it can make all the symptoms worse.

[00:01:51]So, if there's confusion, that could be worse. If there's disinhibition, mhm, that can be worse. If there are balance problems and agitation, those can all be worse because you're basically trying to treat brain chemistry with the benzo, but the whole issue has nothing to do with brain chemistry. You also have to think that being sedated is also not the same thing as sleep. So, when you're sedated like for a medical procedure and you're so-called sleeping cuz you're not awake, you're not like getting restful restorative sleep. Your body is being drugged is making you drowsy and that allows them to do kind of whatever it is that they need to be doing for you, but it's not like you wake up out of surgery and like I feel awesome. I had the best night sleep ever. It was a drugged sleep. So, really we call it more sedation for a reason. You were sedated and that does not correct any type of neurological process that would be driving the sundowning behavior. So, I think it was a really interesting question to say, well, if we want Trump to sleep at night, why can't we just give him medication that makes him sleep at night? And the answer is basically it's just not going to work. Sundowning in and of itself is a complex network of symptoms. It's not just the fact that someone is awake when they should be sleeping and vice versa. There's also the confusion and agitation. There can be pacing. There can be anxiety. There could be hallucinations. So, the sleeping pill is not going to actually address the underlying cause of the sundowning behaviors. So, good thought, uh but that be why you still see that Donald Trump is awake all night and falling asleep all the time in his cabinet meetings and why even if they wanted to, even if they could possibly give him a medication, there's really nothing that they can do about it because we do not have a medication that is going to address that whole network of difficulties and not just the fact that he can't fall asleep at night. As always, he's got to go.