About half of the overall effect of sleeping pills on people, according to British and American scientists, is associated with the placebo effect - a special phenomenon when health improvement is due to therapeutic suggestion, and not due to the properties of the drug itself.
Specialists from the University of Connecticut, Harvard Medical School and Lincoln University, relying on the results of their new research, expressed deep doubts about the effectiveness of sleeping pills for people with insomnia and who prefer taking pills to much more effective treatments.
The study report says: “Unfortunately, today many people use sleeping pills instead of resolving the problem of insomnia with the help of psychological techniques. In addition to the fact that these drugs are much less effective than is commonly believed, they are also dangerous: just remember "Their side effects, such as memory loss, drowsiness, fatigue, or poor coordination. These deficiencies of sleeping pills can greatly offset their benefits."
In the process of scientific work, scientists analyzed and compared the results of 13 earlier clinical trials, which include 65 criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of drugs, and conducted with the participation of almost 4.5 thousand people. The subject of attention of specialists was the difference between the way people suffering from insomnia react to sleeping pills and placebo dummies - tablets that do not have obvious healing properties, but are given to the patient under the guise of potent drugs.
Oddly enough, the difference in changes in health status was quite small. People who took a placebo received from the “dummy” only 2 times less benefit than other patients from competent medicines. In other words, sleeping pills are only 50% more effective than tablets that have absolutely no properties.
Experts from Lincoln University said: "We hope that our study will change the view of some people on sleeping pills and turn to truly effective methods of treating insomnia, for example, psychology."
