Some people take over-the-counter (OTC) antihistamine-containing sleep aids (i.e. NyQuil) to help them fall asleep even when they’re not sick—a strategy that might not sound very risky at first, but can actually be more detrimental than you may think, reports Shape.
While some might call what happened to Cummings “sleepwalking,” that’s actually not the most accurate way to characterize the side effects described by the comedian, says Stephanie Stahl, M.D., a sleep medicine physician at Indiana University Health. “While sleepwalking is not commonly reported with [antihistamine-containing] OTC sleep aids, these medications can cause sedation, confusion, memory lapses, and sleep fragmentation, which can increase the risk of sleepwalking or nocturnal wandering,” she explains.
