Fake pills that help you sleep

PEOPLE given a dummy sleeping pill slept better and felt more r rested in the morning than thoset not given the placebo placebo, according to a study this wee week.

How c could a placebo have this effe effect? I think it’s because a large part of insomnia is due to the anxiety people experie experience when they find it difficult to sleep. They start to associa associate going to bed with lying aw awake worrying about sleepin sleeping, which makes it harder to nod off.

But whenw people take the placebo placebo, they expect to get to sleep: thist relaxes them, so they do actually sleep.

I’ve s seen it work with a patient who insisted that she was tak taking a sleeping tablet then pointedp to her statin, saying it had cured her insomn insomnia. It hadn’t — but it had transfor transformed her nights!