There are many of us who like to listen to music in bed before going to sleep. Let’s face it, doing so helps us not only to escape from reality, but also to block out external sounds, including a partner’s snoring (if that’s the case) or ambient noise coming from outside the windows. But above all it is a time to think and reflect.
We have always believed that it was relaxing. But we were wrong. Most neuroscientists agree that it has more negative than positive effects. It all has to do with sleep hygiene.
The study. Several psychologists have decided to investigate how involuntary musical images, known as auditory worms, can disrupt sleep. What are we talking about? When a song or melody is played over and over again in a person’s mind. These “ear worms” usually occur while you’re awake, but they’ve found that they can also occur while you’re trying to sleep.
A recent study, published in the Journal of Psychological Science, featured an investigation into the experiences of 199 people who frequently listened to music and reported having “worms” in their ears at night and poorer sleep quality. In these studies, music before bed kept the brain more awake at night, repeating the melody and decreasing sleep. It is also curious that instrumental music led to a worse quality of sleep, causing twice as many “worms” than a song with lyrics.
Why? “Optimal sleep hygiene would be to not listen to anything and allow the mind and body to relax naturally, as once you fall asleep, the sound of music can disrupt the healthy stages of sleep that our bodies go through. brain and our body must go through,” explained Lauri Leadley, clinical sleep educator in this article. That is, if music is stimulating, it can interfere with the body’s ability to create melatonin, which helps initiate and maintain sleep.
Apparently our brains continue to process music even when nothing is playing, even seemingly while we’re sleeping. Furthermore, people who experience ear worms regularly at night, one or more times a week, are six times more likely to have poor quality sleep compared to people who rarely experience this phenomenon.
What happens to your brain when you listen to a podcast. It turns out that podcasts and bedtime go hand in hand: According to data from Edison Research, more than half of the 6,000 people surveyed said they had tuned in to a podcast to wind down before bed. A study published in Nature concluded that listening to stories, such as podcasts, activates multiple parts of your brain, including areas responsible for sensory processing, emotions, and memory creation.
According to a sleep research theory called the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis, your brain organizes all of that data during a stage of sleep called slow-wave sleep. Imagine a bunch of neurons huddled around filing cabinets, working together to decide what information for the day is new and should be filed, and what information is already there and doesn’t need to be filed again. Then the neurons take a break. That makes up the long peaks and valleys of brain activity during this type of sleep.
Other “soothing” habits that interrupt sleep. Listening to music before bed isn’t the only “quiet” thing we do that may actually be disrupting our sleep. Nighttime eating or drinking can also interfere. Eating too much before bed, while relaxing, can have the effect of lowering your overall quality of sleep by increasing your metabolism at night.
Similarly, alcohol can feel calming at the time of ingestion, but can disrupt sleep later. Having a drink regularly is usually not a good idea if you want to maintain good sleeping habits.
The great enemy: the screens. Also using screens before bed can make your brain more alert and therefore can make it hard to sleep soundly,” explained Alex Savy, sleep sciences coach at Sleeping Ocean. In a 2014 study, researchers found that participants who read on an iPad before bed took longer to fall asleep and spent less time in REM sleep than those who read a paper book.
sleep hygiene. It may seem silly, but sleep hygiene can give us a better quality of life in general. And there are certain habits that can help us achieve it. For example, having a set schedule normalizes sleep as an essential part of your day and gets your brain and body used to getting as much sleep as you need. Nor should you overdo it with naps. Dimming the lights can help produce more melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep.
Also, experts recommend that instead of making falling asleep the goal, it’s often easier to focus on relaxation. Meditation, mindfulness, rhythmic breathing, and other techniques can put you in the right mindset for bed. So if after 20 minutes you haven’t been able to fall asleep, get up and stretch, read, or do something else that calms you down before trying again. Finally, it is advisable to restrict activity in bed: to create a link in your mind between sleeping and being in bed, it is better to use it only for sleeping, with sex being the only exception.
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