The maybe placebo — but also maybe not — spritz putting us all to sleep

I’ve long gone through periods of nervousness about sleeping, knowing there may be hours when I can’t switch off my brain. And then, once I’m worried, it becomes even harder to fall asleep. My mind scampers along to every possible corner to find fuel for that anxiety.

But I don’t like taking pills to fix the problem. My trick, instead, is creating a nightly routine that signals my mind and body to settle down. Salt Lab Magnesium Oil spray became that ritual for me. Two to four spritzes on the soles of my feet had me asleep within 20 minutes — and staying that way. It really worked. To be sure, I used the spray for a full year before I wrote about it.

When my ode to Salt Lab went live, the reaction was immediate. Everyone, it seems, is struggling to get those precious eight hours, and our readers have bought almost 15,000 sprays in the year since. The story’s comments section sparked a sleep-remedy exchange: CBD gummies, magnesium creams, and supplement powders popped up. And all the sharing reminded me of how I’d spritz the feet of my houseguests with Salt Lab so they, too, could sleep like babies.

Because going without sleep is such a life-disrupting cycle, when you find something that works, it feels like a miracle tale you must spread. You become a proselytizer. But there are also a lot of sleep scams out there (as the other half of the Salt Lab commenters forcefully reminded me), and for years, the Strategist has been doing the legwork to weed those out. It’s been a decadelong effort to find what actually works — not just the sleep tinctures, supplements, sprays, and creams but your entire sleep habitat. We’ve slept on dozens of mattresses and pillows, swaddled ourselves in every possible variation of bedsheet (one of the very first categories we devoted ourselves to), tested out silk sleep masks and weighted sleep masks, and put sound machines head-to-head. We’ve found ever-stranger sleep solutions, including water-powered cooling pads for sweaty sleepers, an upright wedge pillow for snorers, and a nifty chin strap for nighttime mouth breathers in an effort to leave no sleep hack behind. And before there was my magnesium spray, there was a better-than-Ambien lavender stick and CBD tinctures. As you read this, the Strategist is investigating whether red light really works for sleep. The quest is eternal. —D.P. and Diksha Basu, contributing writer