Our Science Marches on Department has brought this earth-shattering research to my attention.
In today's edition of ScienceDaily.com a study was published which found that...
(drumroll please)
PEOPLE WHO DRINK COFFEE (or use caffeine in general) BEFORE THEY TRY TO SLEEP HAVE TROUBLE SLEEPING!!!
This is not a joke. They kept a bunch of people up all night. 3 hours before they were allowed to sleep half of them took a 200mg caffeine pill (equivalent to 2 cups of coffee or 5 Diet Cokes) and the other half didn't get caffeine.
They found (sarcastic astonishment) that the patients who got the caffeine had more trouble sleeping than the ones who didn't! No shit!
I am not making this up. Here's the link.
33 comments:
Our department respectfully refers to these as the 'No Shit Sherlock' studies. Amazing how many of them there are -- probably the product of unfortunate PhD students told to (dis)prove their supervisor's pet peeves.
I am in awe of the enlightenment I feel from this....
thank you so much for sharing this...I will sleep so much better now that I know this! ;)
~hl~
{www.hoscorners.blogspot.com}
I have had this thought so much recently..."Who the hell approved the grant for that?"
SNL used to make a joke during Weekend Update reporting from the medical journal Duh! Let's add this one there as well.
Coffee actually makes me sleepier. Tea and cola has no effect on me..I still sleep.
Not me. I can down a bottle of diet coke and go to bed an hour later, makes no difference to me. I wish it did because it also doesn't really make much of a difference when I am sleepy at work or in class.
Lewis Black mentions a study from some school in North Carolina researching why prisoners want to escape from prison.
I do not recall that he revealed the results...
Maroons.
>:)
Another brilliant bit of researched funded by the taxpayers. We thank you for your continued support.
-Flavius
And shall we project just how much this "scientific" revelation cost? *eyeroll*
Goodness, I had no idea! No wonder they removed the Coke from the school vending machines.
Duh.
Oh, ye gods! WHat a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Yes, but they're Canadian taxpayer dollars.
Maybe someone was just 'practicin' how to do research, and thankfully arrived at this conclusion--it might have been sadder if the null hypothesis had turned out the other way, or something else went wrong and they 'proved' that drinking caffeinated beverage before bedtime was beneficial for sleep AND relieving heartburn.
I love the Ig Noble awards just as much as the next person but this research is just dumb!
I also heard that going to bed at the same time and sleeping for roughly 8 hours each night is also good for your body.
And that drinking brake fluid is a bad idea.
Good thing we have the clever people doing SCIENCE out there to make sure we know stuff we already know! :)
Back in my twenties I used to drink coffee before bed because it helped me sleep.
Now if I drink anything with caffeine in it near bedtime I'm up all night.
Yes, youth is wasted on the young.
A few months back there was one that said that children that got more exercise slept better too... must be the same researchers. Next their gonna do one that studies if new mothers get less sleep than others without children...
But there are some of us that caddeine does the opposite to. I learned the hard way trying to stay awake driving cross country that 2 NO DOZ and a jolt cola put me to sleep. My daughter is the same way. - Just call me the odd duck lol
Next there will be a study on the viability of shutting your eyes before pissing into the wind.
Truly heady days for grants for the logically challenged.
Awesome! Now I know how to get funding for a study: I just propose to prove an already proven hypothesis! Instant $, since there's no way to "fail" the sponsor...especially if the funding comes from a state whose governor owns a company that produces caffeinated beverages.... Not that such things ever happen in actual science of course. I'm just hypothesizing....
It doesn't matter how much caffeine or coffee I have - I never have trouble sleeping - so what does that say about me?
I guess we could do a study - they'd figure out I'm sleep deprived and tired. ;)
So that's what keeping me awake at work....
I love your blog, Dr. Grumpy. I do not comment often, but I am a faithful reader.
Just know I LOL at nearly every post.
The next study:
"It is widely assumed and reported anecdotally that hitting ones penis with a hammer is very painful, however, this has never been proven clinically.
To test this hypothesis we took one hundred adult male volunteers and randomized them into two groups. The first group was hit with a real hammer and the second group was hit with a placebo styrofoam hammer.
The group hit with a real hammer reported significantly more penile pain than the control group."
I'm sure someone is out there designing the study right now.
I drink coke all the time. coffee and occ. juice. I work nights drink coke all night long. drink it before I go to bed, have it next to me while I sleep. No trouble sleeping. I am in my 50's, have been doing this since my teens. Your body gets used to it. No trouble sleeping. No trouble sleeping.
mm
inane studies = great blog fodder, just a shame about the waste of money ....
Well, at least they did an actual study and not just a meta-analysis.
Oh...my...god. So THAT is why I have trouble sleeping. I knew I shouldn't have considered Caffeine to be a sleep-aid. Why didn't they cover these things in Common Sense 101?
If people are getting paid to do studies like that... I need to get back into school so I can do some research!
I drink diet coke and coffee all day long (water makes my mouth dry, I don't know why), all the way up to right before I go to bed, and I've never had a problem sleeping.
You know how it goes; if this year's funding isn't fully spent, they get less funding next year. Or something like that. So any $$$ left over is spent on useless research like this.
I am planning my own scientific research for which I fully expect the government to shell out a few $$million to me, personally.
I am setting out to prove that people who eat WILL not starve to death. Yes, that's right. I'm going to have two groups of people.
Group#1 - no food. none. nada. Let's see what happens.
Group#2 - food. Lots of food. All the food they want.
As research leader I will do all the cooking.
Hypothesis: Group 1 dies. Group 2 lives.
This kind of information must be worth millions... don't you think?
I get Science Daily and Phys.Org on Google reader. We spend a good portion of every dinner hour going over the latest "No s**t" headlines.
My kids are learning something. They're learning how research shouldn't be done.
Hopefully, somewhere in there, they are also learning how research should be done.
Hopefully.
No, but seriously I fall asleep easier after a mug of cold coffee..
(of course sitting down to study after the coffee might be a confounding factor.. :D)
I've always wondered why studies are being done just to confirm the blatant obvious. Did someone seriously think that caffeine would help them sleep at night?
Found your blog recently, btw. I'm loving what I'm reading. :)
I was about say what intellileg said about "no shit sherlock". One of my consultants (attendings) was telling me today about someone who did a phD to answer the question about why men are interested in sex. To be published in the Disneyland Journal of Medicine.
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