wakemate
I have always been interested in Aromatherapy, but have always questioned its efficacy. Some preliminary clinical studies of aromatherapy in combination with other techniques show positive effects but I wanted to see for myself.
The experiment consisted of me using Sleep Scentsations for 7 days and using my WakeMate to track the results. Sleep Scentsations are easy-to-use pillow liners infused with essential oils and fragrance that last 4-5 nights. You just place Sleep Scentsations on your pillow and the scent is released into the air creating a relaxing atmosphere and helping you to unwind and fall asleep more easily.
I used the ‘relax’ scent and as seen below my overall sleep score was 23% higher and my time to fall alseep was 38% shorter when using Sleep Scentsations.
Here you can see my average sleep score over the 7 nights I used Sleep Scensations was 63 vs. my 51 lifetime average.
Here you can see my average time to fall asleep over the 7 nights I used Sleep Scensations was 8 minutes vs. my 13 minute lifetime average.
We’d love to see your results as well! Check out Sleep Scentsations and make sure to tag it and report back to us!
~Team WakeMate
You cannot compare a mean over 7 nights with the mean over 142 nights without taking the variance into account. A 40% decrease in time to fall asleep should be pretty significant over 7 nights, but you cannot really draw conclusions without knowing at least the standard deviation or see a broad pattern of the distribution.
If you want us to trust the maths behind the wakemate, inspire trust in your blog posts
Xavier – that is a very good point. This was not meant to be a statistical analysis, just some anecdotal evidence of my experience with the product. We will be improving the compare tool to allow for much better self analysis.
We also have some things in the works and as we further analyze our database we will be providing more scientific and statistically significant insight on our findings.
What was the placebo? You’d have to try this on at least 4 people, half of them using a (convincing) fake. Quality of sleep really depends on your state of mind so I would imagine a massive placebo effect with anything that claims to improve sleep (except perhaps anesthetics, knocking yourself unconscious or 3 day sleep deprivation).
Hi Greg,
Interesting stuff. When it comes to sleep, there are so many vaiables in play every night . While Xavier and Sjors make good points, even expanding the number of nights, or number of people the way they’re suggesting would just give us more & better anecdotal evidence.
I can’t tell you how often we get E-mails from our customers who say something like “I tried the bars for a week, and I definitely slept better, but not really sure if they helped or not…”
When you find something that works (or a combination of things), stick with it. Don’t overthink or overanalyze it. that’s what keeps people up at night
Great stuff!
sean