Sleep Easy

Enjoying some tunes before bedtime can help you to fall asleep faster, wake up less frequently during the night, and wake feeling more rested in the morning. Using soft, soothing music to unwind before retiring to bed each night is not only acceptable, it’s encouraged as a relaxation technique. The amazing thing is, there’s no one single type of reaction to music. Different tempos, rhythms, and melodies can trigger vastly different reactions.

Listening to music before bed is not the only “calming” thing we do that may actually be disrupting our sleep. Here are some of the other habits sleep experts say to avoid or limit before bed. The outcomes of this study are especially relevant given how common earworms are. In a 2011 study of over 12,000 Finnish internet users, 89.2% of participants reported experiencing earworms at least once a week. Timing –This expresses the use of music to help in the process of monitoring sleep time. Internal –Utilized to describe instances when the target of the distraction is a subjective bodily or mental experience, this level 1 theme was made up of two level 2 subthemes.

Whilst supporting the anecdotal idea that a key reason to select music for sleep is to aid relaxation, the survey identified for the first time a larger collection of motivators for using music when sleep is disturbed. The use of music as a distractor was a prominent theme, with distraction against thoughts a frequent comment that would benefit from further research. Negative thoughts are one of the main contributors to sleep loss in people with insomnia and distraction of these thoughts was one of the main reasons reported for the use of music throughout the survey. It also reduces cortisol, a hormone that stimulates alertness and also stress, according to numerous studies.

Chill-out music can be a mix of genres, including blues, jazz, and pop. The main idea behind these tunes is to generate an ambient environment in which you don’t overthink or dwell on the memories of the day. The response to sound highly varies with people, in both the waking and sleeping lives. Like sight and smell, the sound is connected to memory and can stimulate both positive and negative emotions. People exposed to pink noise during sleep spend more time in deep, slow-wave sleep, according to a study published in The Journal of Theoretical Biology. For many, the rhythmic crashing of water onto sand and rock can be quite calming.

Now they were using our meditations,” Smith concluded, and so the company began commissioning what it calls “stories” — breathy, soothing, grown-up bedtime tales with a feather bed of tinkling music beneath the murmured words. Another criteria for music to help you sleep is for there to be a lack of repetition. When you listen to music, your brain tries to find a repetitive melody, trying to predict a tempo and pattern.

The study’s results helped lead to the conclusion that relaxing classical music could help reduce sleeping problems and would be a good treatment that nurses could use to help treat patients with insomnia. Research has found that music at roughly 60 beats per minute has the most significant effect on our brain. “As you are falling asleep, your heart rate begins to slow and starts to move toward that 60 beats per minute range”, says Breus.

However, the use of a white noise machine could help keep them relaxed and mask any noisy distractions that may wake them, potentially helping them sleep longer. A 2011 study found that listening to music reduced levels of the stress hormone cortisol in patients undergoing surgery. Life’s worries can have a tendency to creep up at the most inopportune times, including bedtime. Tense thoughts can keep you up all hours of the night, and one of the ways music can help you sleep is by alleviating stress and allowing you to drift off to sleep.

Spotify conducted their own research and found that you can reduce blood pressure and heart rate by listening to this song. They named it the best song to listen to if you are a nervous flyer because of its relaxing effect. Of course, it’s not the only song that could help you drift off to sleep at night. As it turns out, there’s a science behind how certain types of music contribute to great sleep—and it has to do with more than just the brain. Unfortunately, that evening bite may interfere with your sleep.

The most common reason given for using music as a sleep aid was to ‘help fall asleep quicker’. 56.82% of participants who used music to help them sleep claimed they strongly agreed or agreed with this statement, and only 20.10% said they disagreed or strongly disagreed. This was followed by ‘reduction in time spent in bed before falling asleep’ (54.35%), and ‘increases sleep satisfaction’ (34.74%). Studies into music’s efficacy as a sleep aid Sleeping Music have used subjective self-report measures and occasionally objective measures such as actigraphy and polysomnography. The majority have been conducted in clinical populations such as individuals with chronic insomnia or patients in hospital settings [28–30].

After WWII, musicians were brought to U.S. hospitals to aid the healing of soldiers’ physical and emotional trauma. Classical music is commonly thought of as somnolent music, that which makes us feel drowsy, sleepy and peaceful. When it comes to relaxing meditation music for sleep, try “Canzonetta Sul-aria” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Nocturne No.2, Op.9 by Frédéric Chopin or this 8-hour mix of Classical Music for Sleeping. And then there is a group of humans who enjoy falling asleep to music. My sense was the structural integrity of Bach, Mozart and some of the other classical music masters couldn’t help but fuel beneficial development of neural pathways. Ever since, if I find my own mind racing when it’s time to hit the pillow, I turn to this recording to help shut off the chaos of the day and enter a more peaceful inner space.