I had some dead time today, but not enough to start writing on the novel. So I went to my spam bin and pulled out a message that came in earlier this morning, offering me that canonical “one weird trick” to get rock-solid sleep. Do this 20 minutes before bedtime and you’ll be a new man!
You’ve seen that sort of thing in your spam bin. These days it’s hard not to see it.
The spammer was bloodsugarfit.com, which sells all sorts of natural remedies. I didn’t click their link but went to the web site, which looked reasonably legit. As best I could tell, they had an affiliate relationship with an outfit called Fisico, which makes a sleep aid supplement called PhysioSleep. The site says Fisico was founded in 2009 by a Greek MD named Dr. George Karanastasis. Good grief! It was one weird Greek ritual! (I get spam pitches for those almost every other day.)
They have a video about PhysioSleep. I said wotthehell and started it. Dr. Karanastasis introduced himself, and he talked…and talked…and talked…
…and talked…and talked. He repeated himself a lot, told us his life story, and mentioned that he was a bad sleeper and grouchy to the point his wife almost left him. I sympathize, though lack of sleep in the wake of the Coriolis collapse did not make me grouchy but depressed and lethargic. He mentioned a conspiracy by the Ivies to prevent natural remedies from being taken seriously. I’ve not seen anything about that, though I could certainly believe it. And he talked…and talked…and talked…
The video window had a run/pause button, but no progress bar. I had no idea how long the video was. So I just let it run. While it ran, I opened another tab and looked up whatever might be out there on PhysioSleep. Turns out it’s an OTC sleep aid with two active ingredients: melatonin and zylaria, which is an extract from some fungus or another. I get pitches all the time for supplements containing Turkey Tail extract and several other fungal extracts. Haven’t tried that one and probably won’t.
Every minute or so I looked back at the tab running the video.
It was still running. He talked, and he talked, and he talked…
I didn’t find anything crisp on Dr. Karanastasis. There is a Dr. Georgios Karanastasis, an internist in Tinley Park, Illinois, who mostly treats headaches and joint pain. No mention of Fisico or PhysioSleep. I looked for product reviews, and found none. Amazon does not sell it.
Glanced back at the video. He was still talking. It was going on twenty minutes by then, and still hadn’t mentioned the product itself. I finally said to hell with it, this is a total waste of my time.
For me, the big puzzle is this: Why did somebody think that a long monotonous video would sell a sleep supplement similar to (if not identical to) stuff they sell on Amazon? Is it due to the sunk cost effect? Are people who watch until its end (whenever that might be) figure, “Well, I sat through half an hour, so to keep it from being a total loss, maybe I should buy some?”
Note well that I didn’t buy any and have no opinion on PhysioSleep or Dr. Karanastasis. I tried melatonin back in 2001 and it didn’t help me sleep. Mostly it messed up my biological clock. Zylaria, well some people who use it in other formulations from other companies think it works, judging by reviews on Amazon. Maybe it does. If so, I wish him well and hope he sells a bunch.
But boy, for busy people like me, that video would be a total showstopper.
Perhaps a Very poorly rendered attempt to get the listener to fall asleep?
The snake-oil charlatans have certainly ramped up their game in recent years. One can only assume they have a reasonable customer base. It’s this a historic event that comes to the surface every so often?
Carl Sagan’s book “The Demon Haunted World” has some good info on the various types of charlatans, mediums, quacks, and con artists. He describes some of the psychological characteristics of us gullible humans, and how such people can play into them.
“The Hidden Brain” podcast by Shankar Vedantam is another good source of material on how our brains work. He interviews various researchers and psychologists to get their take on our behaviors.
I’m impressed by your side searching during the video. I’ve seen a few long form ads and always walked away. I’m curious if this one did the “the popularity of this product has grown at an incredible rate despite it not advertising” claim?
I participated in a study to help people who couldn’t consistently sleep for less than seven hours last year. I found that the pre-bedtime routine coupled with controlling the sleep environment reigned supreme. I also found that melatonin is useful for shifting time-zones (travel or the dreaded DST, you are a lucky man living in AZ) if you take it right before you intend to go to sleep. But, as someone who has spent the majority of his adult life on call, being awakened midway through the night I took it is brutal.
consider that watching the video would probably put you to sleep on its own
Maybe it was in a loop.
FYI and FWIW, Malwarebytes blocked bloodsugarfit.com.
I used to get some (not much) insight into my sleep patterns by running an app on my phone that listened to me all night. When I had to start using a CPAP that didn’t work any more. I started wearing an Oura ring, and that tells me a LOT about my sleep, and my not sleep. The part I appreciate most is a graph of the night, showing deep, shallow, REM and awake. It also gives totals for each. Interesting.
Back a few years when I weighed 155-160, I was diagnosed with apnea and got an APAP machine. I used it every night and my sleep improved greatly. As I worked harder at losing weight, the number of apnea events each night went down, and once I was 148 or so (where I am now) the events stopped altogether. I keep thinking I should bring out the machine from the closet every so often and use it for a night, just to make sure the apnea events haven’t come back.