Long-Term Side Effects of Benzodiazepines

Benzodiazepines are a group of medicines that slow down activity in the brain and nervous system. They are usually prescribed for a short time, for severe anxiety or for sleep problems that will not settle any other way, because doctors know that the longer they are used, the more problems they tend to cause. The difficulty is that the first weeks can feel helpful. Sleep comes more easily, worry feels quieter, and the body feels calmer. That early relief is real, and it is also the reason many people keep using them long after the short period they were meant for has passed. Months turn into years, and by then the effects have changed. What once felt like help starts to feel like a weight, and the person may not even connect the new problems with the medicine, because the changes arrive so slowly.

This article explains, in plain words, what can happen when benzodiazepines are used for months and years: how memory and thinking change, why sleep gets worse instead of better, how mood and relationships are affected, what happens to balance and the body, and why dependence and withdrawal become such a serious part of the picture. It is general information only, not individual medical advice. Benzodiazepines affect different people in different ways, and the risks depend on age, health, other medicines and how long they have been used. If you are worried about your own use, or about someone close to you, a qualified health professional is the right person to talk to. That conversation matters even more before any change is made to long-term use, because stopping suddenly after months or years can itself be dangerous and needs professional support.

How Benzodiazepines Work, and Why Time Changes the Effect

To understand the long-term harms, it helps to understand what these medicines do in the brain. Benzodiazepines increase the effect of a natural calming chemical in the brain called GABA. GABA slows brain activity down, which is why the medicines can reduce anxiety and help a person fall asleep. In the short term, that slowing can feel like relief. But the brain does not stand still. When a calming signal is boosted again and again, day after day, the brain adjusts. It becomes less sensitive to its own calming chemical, and it needs more of the medicine to get the same effect. This is called tolerance, and it is one of the first signs that long-term use is heading in a difficult direction.

Tolerance does not only mean the medicine works less well. It also means the brain starts to depend on it to feel normal. Without it, the brain feels overactive, and the person feels more anxious, more restless and less able to sleep than they did before they ever started. That is a cruel part of the pattern. The medicine was taken to calm anxiety and help sleep, and after months of use it can leave the person more anxious and sleeping worse than at the start. Many people do not realise this has happened. They think their original problem has come back, or grown worse, when in fact part of what they feel is the brain struggling without the medicine it has grown used to.

Age makes this adjustment harder. Older brains are more sensitive to medicines that slow thinking, and older bodies clear medicines more slowly, so the effects can linger longer. That is one reason health guidance in many countries advises against long-term benzodiazepine use in older adults. A dose that a younger person might tolerate can leave an older person confused, unsteady and forgetful for much of the day. The risk is not only about feeling unwell. It is about falls, broken bones, hospital visits and a loss of independence that can follow from a single fall. These are serious harms, and they build up quietly over time rather than arriving all at once.

Memory and Thinking After Months and Years

The most widely recognised long-term harm of benzodiazepines is to memory and thinking. These medicines interfere with the brain’s ability to form new memories, which is why people who use them often find they cannot remember conversations, appointments or things they have just read. In the short term, this may show up as small gaps: a name forgotten, a message not remembered, a page read twice without taking it in. Over months and years, the gaps can become more frequent and more noticeable, and they start to affect work, study and everyday life. A person may repeat themselves without realising it, lose track in the middle of a task, or struggle to learn new information that once came easily.

Thinking itself becomes slower. Tasks that need attention, planning or quick decisions take longer, and mistakes become more common. This is not a lack of intelligence or effort. It is the brain working under a constant sedative effect, even when the person does not feel sleepy. Many people describe it as living in a fog. They can still function, they can still work and talk and look after themselves, but everything takes more effort, and they feel less sharp than they used to be. That fog can be frightening, because it touches the things people value most about themselves: their memory, their judgement and their ability to think clearly.

Research on whether these memory and thinking problems fully reverse after stopping is mixed, and that uncertainty is part of why the issue is taken so seriously. Some people find their thinking clears noticeably over weeks and months after they stop, and their memory improves. Others, especially people who used benzodiazepines for many years or at higher amounts, find that some problems linger for a long time, even after the medicine is gone. No one can predict in advance which group a person will fall into, and that is a strong reason to avoid long-term use where possible, and to raise the question early with a doctor rather than waiting for the problems to become severe.

Sleep That Gets Worse, Not Better

It seems strange that a medicine taken to help sleep can make sleep worse over time, but with benzodiazepines this is a well-known pattern. In the first days and weeks, they usually help a person fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. But the sleep they produce is not the same as natural sleep. They reduce the deep stages of sleep and the dreaming stage, both of which matter for rest, memory and mood. A person may sleep for eight hours and still wake up feeling unrefreshed, because the quality of that sleep was poor. Over months, tolerance grows, and the medicine helps less and less with falling asleep, while the poor quality of sleep remains.

Then the pattern flips. When the effect of each dose wears off during the night, the brain can rebound into a more wakeful state, and the person wakes in the early hours and cannot get back to sleep. They may lie awake feeling anxious, with a racing mind, and they may start to dread going to bed. Daytime sleepiness follows, because the night was broken and the medicine leaves a groggy feeling in the morning. Naps creep in, which makes the next night even harder, and a cycle sets in where sleep is broken at night and heavy during the day. Many people in this cycle increase their use, hoping a stronger effect will fix the night, but that usually makes the underlying problem worse rather than better.

The long-term result is a person who is tired all the time, yet unable to sleep properly. That tiredness affects everything else: mood, patience, appetite, work and the ability to enjoy ordinary life. It also makes it harder to stop, because the fear of a sleepless night without the medicine feels unbearable. This is why sleep problems linked to long-term benzodiazepine use are best addressed with professional help and a proper plan, rather than by changing the pattern alone at home. Good sleep can return, but it usually returns gradually, and it needs time, patience and support.

Mood, Anxiety and the Shrinking of Daily Life

Long-term benzodiazepine use often changes mood in ways that are easy to miss at first. The calming effect that once felt helpful can flatten feelings altogether. A person may feel less anxious, but also less joyful, less interested and less engaged with the people and activities they once cared about. Things that used to bring pleasure, a walk with a friend, a family meal, a hobby, start to feel like effort rather than enjoyment. The world does not become frightening. It becomes grey and distant, and the person slowly withdraws from it without quite noticing what is happening.

Anxiety itself can grow worse between doses, as the brain rebounds from the calming effect. This is sometimes called rebound anxiety, and it can be more intense than the anxiety the person originally had. It often arrives in the hours before the next dose is due, and it teaches the person, wrongly, that they cannot cope without the medicine. Low mood is common too. Long-term use is linked with depression in some people, and with a loss of motivation that makes it harder to work, to look after health, or to seek help. When mood and motivation fall together, the person’s life can shrink: fewer outings, fewer phone calls, fewer plans, until the days look very much the same and the medicine is one of the few constants left in them.

Relationships suffer in this shrinking. A partner or family member may notice that the person is less present, less responsive, quicker to become irritated or tearful, and less reliable than they used to be. Arguments can grow more frequent, not because anyone is trying to be difficult, but because tiredness, poor memory and low mood make patience harder for everyone. Children in the home notice too, even when no one explains what is happening. They learn to be quiet around a tired adult, or to manage without asking for help. None of this is anyone’s fault in a simple sense, but it is a real harm of long-term use, and it is one of the reasons families often welcome change, even when the change itself is hard.

Balance, Falls and the Body Over Time

Benzodiazepines affect coordination and balance, and that effect does not disappear with time. A person on long-term benzodiazepines may feel unsteady on their feet, especially in the morning or when getting up at night. They may stumble, misjudge steps, or find it harder to react quickly if they trip. For a younger, healthy person, a stumble is usually a small embarrassment. For an older person, or someone with other health problems, a fall can mean a broken hip, a head injury, a hospital stay and a long recovery that never quite returns them to where they were. Studies have consistently linked long-term benzodiazepine use with a higher risk of falls and fractures in older adults, and this is one of the clearest and most serious long-term harms.

The body is affected in other ways as well. Appetite can change, sometimes falling so that meals are skipped and weight is lost, sometimes rising in a way that leads to weight gain and poorer health. Digestion can become sluggish, with constipation and stomach discomfort. Muscles can feel weak and tired, partly because the medicine relaxes them and partly because the person moves less when they feel drowsy and low. Breathing can be affected too, especially during sleep, and this matters most for people who already have breathing problems or who use other substances that slow breathing. These effects are not dramatic on any single day, which is why they are easy to overlook. But over months and years, they add up to a body that is weaker, less steady and less resilient than it was.

Driving and other tasks that need full attention are affected throughout. Reaction times are slower, attention wanders, and the ability to judge risk is reduced. A person may not feel impaired, because the sedative effect has become familiar, but their performance on the road or at work can still be worse than it would be without the medicine. This gap between how a person feels and how they actually perform is dangerous, because it removes the warning signal that would normally tell them to stop. It is one reason health guidance advises against driving when these medicines make a person drowsy, and one reason employers in safety-critical work take the issue seriously.

Dependence and the Risk of Withdrawal

Dependence is the central long-term harm of benzodiazepines, and it can develop even when the medicine is taken exactly as prescribed. Dependence does not mean a person is weak or has done something wrong. It means the brain and body have adapted to the medicine and now expect it. When the level falls, the body protests. That protest is withdrawal, and with benzodiazepines it can be severe. Common withdrawal effects include anxiety, restlessness, shaking, sweating, nausea, difficulty sleeping, sensitivity to light and sound, and a feeling of being unreal or detached from the world. In more serious cases, after long or heavy use, withdrawal can include seizures and confusion that need urgent medical care. That is why health guidance is so clear: long-term benzodiazepines should not be stopped suddenly, and any reduction should be planned with a health professional, usually very gradually over weeks or months.

The fear of withdrawal keeps many people using the medicine long after they want to stop. They have tried to cut down, felt awful, and concluded that they cannot manage without it. What they felt was real, but it was withdrawal, not proof that the medicine is still needed. With a slow, supported reduction, the body can adjust step by step, and the worst effects can often be avoided or made manageable. The process takes time and patience, and it is not always smooth, but many people who thought they could never stop have done so with the right plan and the right support. The key is that the plan comes from a professional who understands the medicine, not from a sudden decision made alone on a difficult day.

Dependence also changes how a person thinks about themselves. They may feel ashamed, or worry that others will judge them, even though dependence on a prescribed medicine is a medical issue, not a moral one. That shame can keep people from asking for help, and from telling their doctor the full story. It helps to remember that doctors see this often, that they understand how dependence develops, and that their job is to help, not to blame. Being honest about how long the medicine has been used, and how much is being taken, is the only way a safe plan can be made.

What Can Improve, and What Needs Honest Care

The honest picture is mixed, and it is worth stating plainly. Some harms of long-term benzodiazepine use improve after the medicine is stopped, and they can improve a great deal. Sleep often becomes more natural over time, even if the first weeks are difficult. Thinking and memory often clear, sometimes slowly, sometimes more quickly than the person expected. Mood can lift as the flattening effect wears off and the person starts to re-engage with daily life. Energy returns, appetite steadies, and balance improves. Many people say, months after stopping, that they feel more like themselves than they have in years, and that they had forgotten what clear thinking felt like. Those gains are real, and they are a strong reason for hope.

Other harms may take longer to improve, or may not fully reverse, particularly after many years of use. Memory problems can linger, anxiety may need other kinds of support, and the confidence that was lost over years of dependence takes time to rebuild. That is not a reason to give up on change. It is a reason to be realistic about it, and to seek the right help: a doctor to plan a safe reduction, support for sleep and anxiety that does not rely on a sedative, and the patience to let the brain and body recover at their own pace. Recovery from long-term use is rarely a single moment. It is a slow accumulation of better days, and the people who get through it are usually the ones who had a plan, who had support, and who kept going even when progress felt slow.

If you are reading this because you, or someone you love, has been using benzodiazepines for a long time, the most useful next step is a conversation with a health professional. Take a list of what you have noticed: the memory slips, the tiredness, the falls, the mood changes, the fear of stopping. A doctor can look at the whole picture, including other medicines and health conditions, and can work out a safe way forward. You do not need to have all the answers before that conversation. You only need to start it. It also helps to bring someone you trust to that conversation, because a second pair of ears remembers what the first one misses, and a person who is tired and anxious may not take in everything the doctor says. A family member or friend who has watched the slow change can describe it more clearly than the person living inside it, and that description can help the doctor judge how far the harms have gone. Support does not have to mean a formal programme or a hospital visit. It can mean a regular check-in, a phone call when the nights are hard, a walk together in the morning, or simply someone who knows what is happening and does not judge it. Those ordinary kinds of support are often the ones that make the difference between a plan that is started and a plan that is finished.

Long-Term Use Alongside Other Medicines and Health Conditions

Benzodiazepines are rarely the only medicine a person takes, and that matters, because they interact with many other things. Other medicines that slow the brain, including some pain medicines, some medicines for sleep, and alcohol, can add to the sedative effect, making drowsiness, confusion and unsteadiness much worse than any one of them would cause alone. A person who takes a benzodiazepine and also drinks alcohol, even in amounts that once felt harmless, may find they become far more drowsy, forgetful and unsteady than they expect, and the risk of a fall, an accident, or breathing problems during sleep rises sharply. This is not a rare or theoretical risk. It is one of the reasons doctors ask carefully about alcohol and other medicines before prescribing, and one of the reasons they ask again at every review. If the full picture is not shared, the risks cannot be judged properly.

Health conditions change the picture too. A person with breathing problems may find that long-term benzodiazepines make their breathing shallower during sleep, and they may wake feeling even more tired and unrefreshed than before. A person with liver problems may clear the medicine more slowly, so its effects last longer and build up over days. A person with depression may find their mood flattened further, and a person with a history of falls may find that each year of use adds to the risk of the next one. None of these effects is inevitable, and none of them means a person has done something wrong. They mean that long-term use is not a single, simple risk, but a risk that changes with the rest of a person’s health, and that it needs to be reviewed in the light of the whole picture, not as a prescription that continues unchanged year after year. That review, done honestly with a doctor who knows the full list of medicines and conditions, is one of the most useful things a person on long-term benzodiazepines can do.

My Take:

I want to start this part honestly, because I think the subject of long-term benzodiazepine use deserves honesty more than it deserves comfort. I do not think the people who end up using these medicines for years are careless, or weak, or looking for an easy way out. Most of them started with a real problem: anxiety that would not settle, sleep that would not come, a period of life that felt unmanageable. A doctor prescribed something that helped, and the help was real. The problem is not that the first prescription was wrong. The problem is that nobody, often including the person taking the medicine, noticed when the short-term help quietly turned into a long-term harm. That turning point is almost invisible, and by the time it is visible, the medicine has become part of daily life, and stopping feels frightening. I think that is the saddest part of the whole story: the harm arrives disguised as help, and it takes years before anyone calls it by its real name.

What troubles me most is the memory harm, because memory is so close to who we are. A person who cannot remember a conversation with their child, or a promise they made to a friend, or a task they were trusted with at work, is not just forgetful. They are losing small pieces of their own life, and they often do not know they have lost them until someone else points it out. That is a lonely experience. It makes a person doubt themselves, and it makes the people around them unsure how to help. I have read enough about this to know that the memory effects are not imagined, and they are not a sign of ageing alone. They are a known effect of these medicines, and they deserve to be talked about far more openly than they are. If more people knew, before they started, that years of use could cost them their sharpness, I think more of them would ask for a review sooner, and more doctors would offer one sooner too.

I also think about sleep, because sleep is where the promise of these medicines is most visible, and where the failure is most painful. A person who cannot sleep is desperate, and a medicine that brings sleep feels like a gift. But the sleep it brings is a shallow copy of real sleep, and over time it stops bringing even that. The person is left exhausted, frightened of the night, and convinced they cannot sleep without help. I find that heartbreaking, because the brain does know how to sleep. It has forgotten how, under years of chemical help, and it needs time and patience to remember. The first weeks without the medicine can be hard, and I will not pretend otherwise, but the sleep that returns, slowly and unevenly, is real sleep, and it restores a person in a way that no tablet can. That is worth working towards, even when the path is uncomfortable.

The dependence part of this story is the part I think is most misunderstood, and I want to be clear about it. Dependence on a prescribed medicine is not the same as choosing to misuse a substance, and it is not a character flaw. It is what the brain does when it is given the same calming signal every day for months: it adapts, and then it protests when the signal is taken away. The protest can be frightening, and it can convince a person that they need the medicine forever. They do not. They need a slow, careful, supported way of reducing it, and they need someone who understands the process to walk them through it. I think the shame around dependence does more harm than the dependence itself, because shame keeps people silent, and silence keeps people stuck. If you are dependent on a medicine your doctor prescribed, you have nothing to be ashamed of. You have a medical problem, and medical problems deserve medical help, not judgement.

I think about the families a great deal when I write about this, because they are the ones who watch the slow change and feel powerless to stop it. A partner sees the person they love become slower, flatter, more forgetful, and less interested in the life they once shared. A child learns to lower their voice, or to stop asking for help with homework, because the adult in the house is tired and irritable. A parent worries, and does not know whether to speak up or stay quiet. These are real harms, and they are not listed on a medicine leaflet, but they are felt every day in the home. I would say to any family reading this: your worry is not an overreaction, and your patience is not wasted. The person you love is still there, underneath the fog, and the fog can lift. The way to help is not to blame, and not to take the medicine away suddenly, which can be dangerous, but to encourage an honest conversation with a doctor, and to stay close while that conversation happens.

Falls are the harm I wish more people took seriously, because they are so preventable and so costly. A fall is not a small thing for an older person. It can mean a broken bone, a hospital stay, a loss of confidence, and a life that becomes smaller afterwards. I know that sounds dramatic, but it is the reality for many families, and it often starts with a medicine that made the person unsteady without anyone connecting the two. If an older relative is using benzodiazepines long term and has become unsteady, or has fallen, that is not just bad luck. It is a reason to ask a doctor to review the medicine, and to ask whether the risks still outweigh the benefits. That single question, asked early, can prevent a great deal of suffering.

I am also honest about the fact that stopping is not easy, and I do not want to give the impression that it is. A slow reduction takes weeks or months, and there will be difficult days, especially around sleep and anxiety. Some people need other kinds of support during that time: help with sleep habits, help with anxiety that does not rely on a tablet, someone to talk to when the nights are long. That support matters, and it is not a sign of weakness to need it. It is a sign of taking the process seriously. The people who succeed are rarely the ones who white-knuckle their way through alone. They are the ones who had a plan, who had a doctor who listened, and who had someone at home who understood what was happening and stayed patient through the hard weeks.

Money is not the first thing people think of with a prescribed medicine, but over years the cost adds up, and so does the cost of the life that shrinks around it. A person who is tired, forgetful and low is less able to work, less able to look after their home, and less able to enjoy the things they spend money on. I do not think money is the most important part of this story, but I do think it is a useful way to see the scale of the harm. Years of a medicine that was meant for weeks is not only a health cost. It is a cost in time, in energy, in relationships, and in the life that could have been lived more fully. That is worth counting, even if it is painful to count.

I want to say something about doctors, because I think they are caught in a difficult position too. A doctor who prescribes a benzodiazepine for a person in distress is trying to help, and in the short term they often do. The difficulty is the follow-up: the review that does not happen, the repeat prescription that continues without a conversation, the patient who is too polite, or too tired, or too frightened to ask whether the medicine is still needed. I do not think blame helps here either. What helps is a culture where reviews happen, where long-term use is questioned kindly, and where patients feel able to say, I have been on this for a long time, and I am not sure it is helping anymore. If you are that patient, say it. Your doctor would rather hear it now than discover the harm years later.

I want to add something about the review itself, because I think it is the most practical step in this whole article, and the one that is easiest to put off. A review is not a confrontation, and it is not a test. It is a conversation that starts with a simple sentence: I have been taking this for a long time, and I would like to talk about whether it is still helping me. That sentence is enough. A good doctor will not be surprised by it, and will not judge you for it. They will look at how long you have been using the medicine, what it was first prescribed for, what has changed since then, and what other medicines and health problems are in the picture now. They may suggest a slow reduction, or they may suggest other kinds of support for sleep and anxiety first, or they may suggest a plan that takes months rather than weeks. Whatever they suggest, the point is that the decision is made together, with the full picture in front of you, rather than by a repeat prescription that nobody has looked at for years. If you have never had that conversation, please have it. It costs nothing, and it can change the next ten years of your life.

I think about grandchildren a great deal when I write about long-term benzodiazepine use, because they are often the people who feel the change most keenly and understand it least. A grandparent who was once quick with a story, or steady on their feet at a family gathering, becomes slower, foggier, and more likely to stay at home. The grandchildren do not know why, and they may think the grandparent is no longer interested in them, when the truth is that the grandparent is tired, forgetful, and a little frightened by their own confusion. That misunderstanding is painful on both sides, and it is preventable. When a family understands that the change has a medical cause, and that it can improve, the grandchildren can be told, in simple words, that their grandparent is not well, that a medicine is making them sleepy, and that the family is helping them get better. Children understand far more than adults often think, and they are far kinder than adults often fear. Telling them the truth, kindly, protects the relationship, and it gives the grandparent a reason to keep going through the hard weeks of change.

Patience is one more thing I want to talk about, because it is the quality this whole subject demands most, and the one that is hardest to find when you are tired and frightened. Recovery from long-term use is slow. Sleep does not return in a night. Memory does not clear in a week. Confidence does not come back in a month. The brain has adapted over years, and it needs months to adapt back, and that slowness can feel like failure, especially on a bad day. I would ask anyone going through it to measure progress in weeks, not in days, and to notice the small signs: a morning that felt a little clearer, a conversation that was easier to follow, a night that was a little less broken. Those small signs are real progress, and they add up. The people who get through this are not the ones who never had a bad day. They are the ones who had a bad day, and then got up the next morning and tried again. That stubborn, ordinary persistence is the most hopeful thing I know about this subject.

One more thought I want to leave with you is about honesty, because honesty is what makes every other part of this work. Be honest with your doctor about how long you have been using the medicine and how much you take, even if the answer is embarrassing. Be honest with your family about how you feel, even when the feeling is shame. Be honest with yourself about whether the medicine is still helping, or whether it has become a habit that is costing more than it gives. Honesty does not fix everything at once, but it opens the door to every fix that exists, and without it, the door stays shut. A person who is honest about their use is a person who can be helped, and a person who can be helped is a person whose life can change. That is not a small thing. It is the beginning of everything else.

Finally, I want to leave a hopeful thought, because this subject can feel heavy, and I do not want to end on heaviness alone. The brain is remarkably able to recover. Sleep can become natural again. Thinking can clear. Mood can lift. The person who felt flat and foggy for years can feel like themselves again, and that return, when it comes, is often described as one of the most satisfying experiences of a person’s life. It does not happen overnight, and it does not happen without help, but it does happen, and it happens often enough that it is worth believing in. If you have been using benzodiazepines for a long time, you are not beyond help, and you are not too late. The best next step is a conversation, and the best time for that conversation is now.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main side effects of benzodiazepines on long-term health?

Long-term use can affect memory and thinking, sleep quality, mood, balance and coordination, appetite and energy. Many people notice forgetfulness, slower thinking, daytime drowsiness, broken sleep, low mood and unsteadiness. The effects vary from person to person and tend to grow with longer use, older age and other health problems.

How quickly can benzodiazepines affect longterm?

Some effects, such as drowsiness, poor memory for new information and unsteadiness, can appear within days or weeks. Others, such as tolerance, dependence, worsening sleep quality and a shrinking daily life, build up over months. The speed depends on the person, how long the medicine has been used, and other medicines and health conditions.

Can the harm benzodiazepines causes to long-term health be reversed?

Some harms often improve after use stops, especially sleep quality, thinking, mood and energy, although recovery can take weeks or months. Other changes, particularly after many years of use, may improve only partly or take much longer. Stopping suddenly after long use can be dangerous, so any reduction should be planned with a health professional.

Why does benzodiazepines affect long-term health?

Benzodiazepines boost a calming signal in the brain, and with repeated use the brain adapts, becoming less sensitive to that signal and dependent on the medicine. That adaptation affects memory, sleep, mood, balance and the body’s stress response, which is why one medicine can cause problems in so many different areas at once.

When should someone seek help about benzodiazepines and long-term health?

Seek help if you notice ongoing memory problems, broken sleep, low mood, unsteadiness or falls, or if you feel you cannot cope without the medicine. Talk to a health professional before changing the pattern of use, especially if use has lasted months or years. Urgent help is needed for severe confusion, seizures, or a fall with injury.

Where can I learn more about benzodiazepines and long-term use?

Reliable reading on benzodiazepines and long-term use is available from the NHS, the Mayo Clinic, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, all linked in Sources below. Anyone worried about benzodiazepines and long-term use can also speak with a health professional.

Sources

This article is general information only. It is not individual medical advice. If you are worried about your health, talk to a qualified health professional.