Beating the Borers (1)

Researchers at the University of Michigan Health System have found a way to combat the sleepiness and to keep students awake during class, and it doesn't have anything to do with caffeine or high-sugar snacks.

In a study published in the latest issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, they report that students in a class who were taught to self-administer acupressure treatments to stimulation points on their legs, feet, hands and heads were more alert and less fatigued.

"The study showed that a stimulation acupressure regimen leads to a statistically significant reduction in sleepiness compared to an acupressure treatment that focuses on relaxation," says Richard E. Harris, Ph.D., research investigator in the Division of Rheumatology at the U-M Medical School's Department of Internal Medicine and a researcher at the U-M Health System's Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center.
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Here I introduce a series about the Borers. The Borers are better known by their full title: The Brain Borers That Ate Your Memory. In this episode, we see the Scientist (For every Menace, there is a Scientist.) discovering the Weakness (Menaces always have a Weakness).

Actually, what the research showed was a reduction in sleepiness in self-reports on the Stanford Sleepiness Scale. The researchers note that future research will be needed to determine whether there is an effect on classroom performance.

This paradigm is the ideal placebo study for two reasons. First, self-reports are highly susceptible to the placebo effect. Second, a placebo effect here might be just what you want. The treatment, skin pressure, is harmless, easy, and free. If it does any good at all, for whatever reason, it is worth the cost.

What’s more, this kind of treatment almost guarantees a placebo effect for people who believe in it. And a placebo effect might even be more useful than a real effect here. A placebo effect would work even if you didn’t get the pressure point right or didn’t do the treatment right. You could do it right there in class, just when the lecture got really boring.

The experimenter in this case had the people press their points at lunch. But I think it would probably work better right when you need it. The usual advice to people who get sleepy while studying is to get up, walk around, get some coffee, and take a short break. That would produce an entertaining effect in a lecture, but authority figures would probably not like it. But people can press their points without bothering anyone.

By the way, I’m not sure what the points are, but the information is probably available from the article or the author.