An ancient, traditional remedy for insomnia—the scent of lavender flowers—has now been proved effective. In a recent study, 30 volunteers with chronic insomnia slept each night for three weeks on lavender-scented pillows in a controlled room where their s

The impact that the scent of lavender flowers have on sleeping is very weakly demonstrated here in the experiment conducted above. The test process is intrinsically flawed because of the test fails to establish clear effect of lavendar scent on the patients for a longer period of time and also fails to show the relation what were the results would be, had the scented pillow were taken out after the prescribed period of medication. Establishing results based upon these issues will likely associate the strong relation of lavendar scent to sleeping effects , If any.

Closly analysing the test process and results, in the first week of the experimet the volunteers were reportedly tired after the sleep. The question here arises is if they felt tired after waking up when they were using normal medication and no scented pillows? Again this needs to be answered if the scented pillows were or the combination of both were having that tiring effect or the tiring was simply due to the medication as a normal side effect. Again the electronic process which were used to monitor the sleep state of the process can not be trusted unless the volunteers were interviwed about their sleeping experince and henceforth. Secondly taking the results from the second week , the volunteers having stopped their medication were having less sound sleep and were more tired than usual. Again this results does not indicate what effect was being produced by using the scented pillow, Weather the scented pillow was responsible for causing tiredness and so indicating a negative association or if that was the aftermath of the stopping the medication. If former was the case again the scented pillow seems to have no such positive effect on the sleeping pattern. Again if we suppose that the in experimnts with no scented pillow, volunteers were not able to sleep after puting medication on hiatus then we colud have established the role lavendar scent played. And also the effects of not taking the medication in isolation for the third week hd been known then we could have better examined the lavendar scent have on sleeping pattern. Thus we see that similar test without the lavendar scented pillow needs to be conducted on the same set of volunteers for the polarisation of the results and clear identification as to what caused what.

Thirdly and equally importantly is what is known as placebo effect. The test volunteers would have been told that what were the purpose of the test and what results they researchers were expecting. This might would have led a pshychological effect on the sleeping pattern because now the volunteer believing that they must sleep well because they are under a medication with positive effect. We will never know the case because again disorders related to sleep is again pshychological than physical and what could lead to sound sleep or imsomnia cannot be discernible. Unless and until we have test group and control group methodolgy to conduct such research we can not for sure establish the relation. In the current nature of experiment the control group can also not be practically created becaue the absence of scent will cleary make them realis that they are in the control group and similarly the presence of the smell will make people aware in the test group. So we see that such experiments were to inputs are involved the medication and the lavendar scent should be conducted in isolation along with the test conducted above and also for a prolong period of time and detailing weather the volunteers were aware of the possible outcomes researchers were expecting would lead to a possible conclusion.
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