Placebo or not

I've never been a good sleeper.  I often struggle to get to sleep and then I'll toss and turn through the night.  I'm not sure what the cause of it all is, but it's definitely annoying.  I remember when I was in the dorm rooms at boarding school, after lights out, I would lay there slowly trying to sleep.  Meanwhile, some of my fellow boarders would be dead to the world and snoring within five minutes.  I was always incredibly jealous of their ability to fall asleep so quickly.  It seemed like a gift to be able to sleep without effort.

Lately, I've been reading a bit about the benefits to sleeping of the "weighted blanket".  I've even got a few friends who have started trying it.  The concept seems to be simple enough, that sleeping with a greater weight helps to push down on your body like a kind of "hug" which in turn helps a person sleep.  There don't seem to be that many actual studies on whether it works, but there are plenty of anecdotal reports about its effectiveness.

Now, I realise that anecdotal evidence is the weakest of all the different types of evidence, but I didn't see the harm in trying it.  For the risk of a small amount of money, I could improve my sleep and that seemed like a very fair gamble to take.  So I jumped on Amazon and made my purchase.  Within a few days it arrived at work and I had the fun task of lugging it home (at 20lb, it's definitely not light).

After a few nights, I felt like I was sleeping better.  I had no actual way of telling other than I did notice I was able to get to sleep more quickly and I didn't seem to be waking up so much during the night.  The most interesting observation of all was that I found that I was generally waking up in the same position as when I went to sleep.  It seems to be a success so far.