Music can be a great help when you can't fall asleep. We have certainly experienced it on our skin but now a new English research, for the first time, has shown that listening to music promotes relaxation and consequently sleep.
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Music can be a great help when you can't fall asleep. We have certainly experienced it on our skin but now a new English research, for the first time, has shown that listening to music promotes relaxation and consequently sleep.
Sleep loss and insomnia are widespread and often underestimated problems despite having severe physical and economic consequences. Yet, until now, there was no systematic data on how widely used music is as a sleep aid.
Scientists at the University of Sheffield in the UK conducted an online survey in which they investigated sleep habits, the choice to listen to music before bed and the type of songs they listen to.
“While music appears to have the potential to help sleep, there is no systematic population evidence of how it is used, whether in terms of prevalence, musical choices or reasons. It seems likely that music with certain characteristics, such as slow modulation, may be more suitable for promoting sleep than other music and certain genres (such as new age music) ”explain the scientists. “However, this has not been systematically studied to date on an experimental level. The current study is a first attempt to correct this situation and to build new literature by investigating the effects of using music in a short-term self-help environment ”.
It turned out that taking a few minutes lulled by the notes could be very helpful.
The analysis, led by Tabitha Trahan, found that 62% of 651 respondents always use music as a sleep aid, citing 14 musical genres and 545 artists. A very broad panorama, which reflects the various tastes of the interviewees, whose average age was 33 (the youngest was 18 and the oldest 79).
Even those who do not suffer from sleep disorders used music to improve the quality of their sleep experiences. Younger people with greater musical involvement turned out to be much more likely to use music for sleep. The interviewees believe that it is useful both to promote sleep and to block internal or external stimuli that would otherwise disturb it.
Music that helps you sleep
Scientists also tried to figure out what kind of music was most conducive to sleep based on the answers given by respondents. Johann Sebastian bach was the most cited artist (15 people 15) followed by E (13) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (13) Brian Eno (10) and finally Coldplay and Frédéric Chopin (both 9).
“The largest survey ever seen on the daily use of music for sleep reveals multiple pathways that go far beyond relaxation, including hearing masking, habit, passion for music and mental distraction. This work offers a new understanding of the complex motivations that drive people to use music as a sleep aid and the reasons why so many find it effective " he said Trahan.
The benefits of listening to music before bed
According to British scientists, music has many positive neurological and physiological effects. Reduces anxiety, physical pain, keeps blood levels at bay cortisol, the stress hormone and drives away negative thoughts.
It costs nothing to try!
The study was published in PlosOne.
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Francesca Mancuso
