viagraViagra and sleeping pills sound like the makings of an interesting night.

Now imagine them prescribed to little kids.

Don't worry, it's only half of what you think.

Viagra is being investigated as a possible help for kids with a rare lung disease -- Bloomberg reports only 600 kids suffer from pulmonary arterial hypertension, but that's still 600 too many.

The penis-pumping drug works on the blood flow to the penis, and apparently can work on the blood flow in the lungs too. It's still up to the FDA to investigate how to properly test Revatio, the Viagra diminutive, so don't expect kids to be scarfing down little blue pills anytime soon.

What is a problem now, however, is the increasing number of sleeping pills being scarfed down by kids.

According to a new survey of members of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 96 percent of practitioners prescribe at least one sleeping aid a month to their child patients.

The practitioners report "insomnia was a major problem in almost a third of their school-aged and adolescent patients."

So we spend all that time teaching our babies to self-soothe, only to medicate them in the end, huh?

 

Image via jurveston/Flickr