Have you ever thought about the relaxing power of words? According to recent research, listening to relaxing words can help you sleep better and feel more rested, because just as bedtime stories would help you sleep better
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The bedtime stories they hold a special place in many people’s hearts, and for good reason. Aside from the sentimental value they carry, recent research suggests that bedtime stories could have benefits for adults too.
In fact, a new study has suggested that the calming words, like those of bedtime stories, listened to before sleeping could have even more benefits if they continued during sleep. Research has highlighted why calming words could be considered, along with white noise and to ocean waves, as a potential aid for improve the quality of sleep.
I study
The study, published in Journal of Sleep Researchfound that when soothing words were played during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, there was a increase in the duration of deep sleep and the subjective quality of sleep.
To reach these conclusions, they tested how the presentation of words affected ECG (heartbeat) activity during NREM sleep. They observed that the time between heartbeats was longer during the presentation of the relaxing words compared to the control words, indicating a slowing of cardiac activity specification of relaxing words versus control words.
They also found that cardiac activity carries information about sleep depth and modulation, independent of brain activity, supporting the importance of considering bodily signals when analyzing sleep functions.
In most cases, sleep research focuses exclusively on the brain and not the entire body. However, this study shows that even while you close your eyes, your body picks up sounds in the space around you, affecting both your heart rate and the quality of your sleep.
Saying soothing words during sleep could be helpful for those who have difficulty sleeping deeply or who notice a higher heart rate during sleep. Furthermore, this shows that the environment, especially the audio environment, plays a significant role in the duration and quality of deep sleep.
Why is deep sleep important?
All stages of sleep work together to help you restore your body and mind and wake up refreshed.
Deep sleep (sometimes also called slow wave sleep) is the third phase of sleep, after the two phases of light sleep. We spend approximately 20-25% of our sleeping time in this phase, during which muscle and tissue growth, as well as cell repair, are promoted.
In other words, if you don’t sleep soundly enough, you don’t give yours body the possibility to adequately recover from the day.
So if you think you’re lacking deep sleep (or your wearable sleep tracker tells you so), it’s worth investing some time in optimizing your sleep environment and maybe even trying some soothing words.
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Source: Journal of sleep research
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