Nothing in your post rules out the placebo effect. Why do you think it’s not the placebo effect?
This is a possibility.
My late spouse had chronic pain issues. Any sort of pain reliever worked to help him drop off to sleep - not because it was sleep inducing, but less pain meant more able to sleep.
Or maybe it is just placebo effect - but hey, that means she has a GREAT, non-narcotic, non-benzodiazepine sleep aid with minimal side effects! Yes, I’m serious. As long as she’s not taking any then attempting to drive or operate heavy machinery I don’t see a problem here.
Why wouldn’t it work when she’s a asleep? Your brain works even when it’s asleep, during REM sleep it works pretty hard, actually.
That’s different than, say, being knocked out by an anesthesiologist.
But during normal sleep your brain isn’t shut down, just working in a different mode.
The IBs don’t knock me out. But, I can get a great, long sleep.
So now that’s out of the way, how does Ibuprofen work on zombie brains?
The fact that I did not expect it to make me sleep better. I just took the pill to calm my toothache.
I have used ibuprofen as a sleep aid. When my knee doesn’t ache as much I can get to sleep easier.
The placebo effect is a possibility, but it may simply be a Pavlovian type response, anticipating she fall asleep soon and being more relaxed as a result, which is similar but not exactly the same as the placebo effect. We’d have to know if the ibuprofen is providing some other physical benefit.
Ibuprofen is, loosely speaking, a cannaboid. It gives some people something that can be loosely described as “hallucinations”.
A common beneficial affect that NSAIDs have on the endocannabinoid system is that they calm you down. Kid has an earache and is screaming? Give them a Tylenol. That will give you a bit of a break…
yeah, 3 or 4 Advil far enough apart will knock my aunt out all night …
I love that this thread was resurrected by stillAlive…
My wife uses Advil to help her sleep. I’ve tried to explain to her why it doesn’t work but apparently it does. She drops right off.
Yeah…again, none of that rules out the placebo effect. Expectations are certainly important, but not necessarily in the way one might think.
As several others have pointed out, relieved pain makes it easier to sleep, so some people will fall asleep when they take ibuprofen, but not because they took ibuprofen. This is a great example of what people mean when they say “correlation does not imply causation.”
A toothache seems like a prime candidate for the kind of pain that keeps one up; conversely, removing that pain might be what let you sleep even if you weren’t conscious of your own sleep deprivation.
Also, some people have strong preconceived notions about “drugs.” I take Ritalin to control my ADD symptoms, and I’ve often heard parents say they’re reluctant to put their kid on Ritalin or Adderall because they “don’t want their kid to turn into a zombie.”
I find this hilarious—clearly, nearly everyone who expresses this concern has never taken amphetamines. (Adderall is a mixture of levo- and dextroamphetamine. Ritalin is pharmacologically quite similar to amphetamines).
Lots of naive people—amphetamine-naive and just plain naive—believe that drugs put you to sleep, full stop. And lots of people who have experienced unusual symptoms while taking a given medication believe very strongly that they’ve established causality without any sense that causality is very, very difficult to establish in a rigorous way.
For example, how many parents believe that giving kids sugar tends to make the kids hyperactive? Lots! And yet, this is just a myth.
That’s not to say that ibuprofen can’t make people sleepy. But feeling sleepy after taking ibuprofen doesn’t rule out the placebo effect, regardless of your expectations prior to taking it.
I don’t have a cite for this, but it’s worth keeping in mind that perceptions of drug effects can be strongly influenced by culture.
A medical anthropologist friend of mine once mentioned that while Americans and many others think of marijuana as a relaxing, mellowing drug, some cultures (South American ones? I forget) perceive it to be energizing.
Drug effects are complicated and depend on a large number of unrelated factors, some of them very squishy. The signal-to-noise ratio is terrible. This is one reason why it’s hard to reproduce results. The same reason makes it really hard to rule out the placebo effect.
Duplicate post - NM
Even a baby aspirin will help me if I’m having a jumpy leg or any cramping. It’s just enough of a relaxer to let me get to sleep.
There’s also the possibility that you know you’ve got pain relief on board, and that knowledge in and of itself can be relaxing.
Typo Knig once found that narcotics were VERY helpful in relieving pain - without even opening the bottle 
Seriously: he’d just had a root canal and it’s semi-routine to prescribe a few Vicodin or similar to use if needed for a day or two. He swears he felt better just knowing he had them if he needed them (he never actually took any).
In the interest of posting completely non-controlled, zero-blind study “data” …
Due to this thread I tried the night before last taking an ibuprofen at bed time. Had a terrible night. Wide awake before 4 and couldn’t go back to sleep.
So, that’s one “No” vote for it being a sleep aid.
That is very much like the placebo effect, which contrary to many statements on the subject is not about sugar pills. It is already well understood that theplacebo effect is closely tied to ritual, just seeing a doctor helps some people, sometimes just making an appointment to see a doctor works also.
The case of taking ibuprofen is a bit different though, ibuprofen does physically affect people. If if that effect is not directly related to sleeping it is still different from the placebo effect because it requires some actual physical reaction to the medication.
It’d be difficult to find a drug that doesn’t have a reported side effect of drowsiness in some people.
For instance, both Ritalin and Adderall (both stimulants) may cause drowsiness (especially odd in the case of Adderall, which is a combination of amphetamines).
Primates are weird.
My experience is that pain relief is often in and of itself relaxing. When I have pain, I’m all tensed up, and when the pain leaves, even if I didn’t take anything, that tension relaxes. And tension is a big thing that can make it hard to sleep.
I’ve also seen studies that even basic analgesics can work as mild antidepressants. And anything that can help with depression can also help with sleep, as depression often causes insomnia.