Reaching for the first sleep aid you find when insomnia hits? Not all sleeping pills are the same. Each class of sleep aid works a bit differently from the other, and side effects vary.

It's important to ask key questions before choosing your sleep medicine.

• How long does it take for the sleeping pill to take effect?
• How long do the effects last?
• What's the risk of becoming dependent on the sleeping pill, physically or psychologically?

All sleep medicines have the potential for causing dependence. In the large majority of cases, however, this is psychological dependence, not physical.

Talk with your doctor, and use this chart to help you decide which sleeping pill is right for you.

For chronic pain sufferers, this might be the earliest beginning of the ultimate end for unrelenting pain. Columbia University researchers have been studying how pain works at the molecular and cellular level and discovered a key enzyme that cause nerve cells to send pain messages through the central nervous system even when there is no physical pain being experienced. So although you might not actually be in physical pain any longer, if your brain is being told there is still pain, you will experience the reality of pain.

Because of this find, researchers are hoping a drug can be developed that will shut down the messengers and the message.

Researcher Richard Ambron is quoted as saying that pain is not necessary. I could not agree more and have been an advocate for quality of life issues for long-term cancer survivors who must endure chronic pain without effective relief.

Just like Ambron, I do not think it is necessary that people put up with or suffer silently in pain either, and because the current methods of treatment can lead to additional health problems, this type of research is most welcome -- and long past due.