Sleeping Music enlivens you and uplifts your soul. It is the least expensive rejuvenating tool. On the other hand, music helps you sleep too. Have you ever wondered why classical tunes induce a snooze effect?
Healthy sleep patterns are important to maintain a vigorous and fit daily routine. Regular sleep activity also contributes to lowering the risk of chronic disease states as heart ailments, psychological disorders, and even obesity. Though there are many medical remedies that help induce sleep, they have side effects. They stop exerting the desired effects after a while. Some of them may even be habit-forming in addition to causing a strain on your hard-earned money.
So if you are experiencing a disturbance in your sleeping pattern, you might want to seek help from sleeping music. For some, music is a treat for their ears. Our whole body responds to music, particularly when listening to blasts from the past. We experience positive effects, physically and mentally. Lately, many theories have come up that suggest music helps you calm down and sleep. Let us see how music affects our body and if sleeping music is of any help regarding our siestas.
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Effects of music on our body
Our brain relays all kinds of signals to our body when we listen to music. From this, we can make an inference that sleeping music also helps achieve regular sleep patterns. Some of the effects that music has on our body include
- The music slows down the heart rate
- It also decelerates the breathing rate
- Music help relax our muscles
- Music eases our blood pressure levels
- Music alters the chemical and hormonal profile of our body
- Music activates the right and left the side of our brain, the logical and creative hubs
- Music helps you tap into the long-term memory area, the hippocampus of the brain
Music makes you respond differently to happy and sad tunes. Some individuals perform and deliver their best while listening to their favourite tunes. As music taps into our long-term memory lane, many songs bring a nostalgic sensation thereby improving our mood or uplifting our spirit. Music also helps predict your personality and temperament. Besides improving our motor skills and reasoning traits, music also improves our visual attentiveness. That’s why it is easy to exercise while listening to music.
Judging by the above-mentioned facts, which parallel some of the biological changes that occur while we sleep, sleeping music helps in regulating our sleep patterns and overcome insomnia and sleep debt.
The facts about sleeping music
According to the National Sleep Foundation
“Older adults who listen to 45 minutes of relaxing music before bed
- fall asleep faster,
- sleep longer,
- wake up less during the night, and
- rate their nights as more restful than when they don’t listen to music”
Some similar findings were found with young adults. National Sleep Foundation further quotes
“When younger adults are given the option to listen to classical music, books on tape or nothing before bed, the ones who relax with music see the greatest improvement in sleep quality”
Sleeping music affects our parasympathetic system. It, thereby, brings down the heart and breathing rates, relax our bodies, and prepare grounds for a restful nap. Of course, the type of sleeping music you choose definitely affects your internal snooze button. According to WebMD,
“A recent meta-analysis of music-sleep studies focusing on 10 high-quality studies found that music helps people with both short-term and chronic sleep problems”.
Some of the benefits of sleeping music include
- improves the quality and quantity of sleep
- helps sleep faster
- induces deep sleep with fewer wake-ups during the night
- stimulates the release of good chemicals
- helps relax your body
- sticking to a regular routine contributes towards regular sleep patterns in the long-run
So now we know cradlesongs are not just for babies. Sleeping music helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle of almost any age. It is fast becoming accepted and recommended therapy for improving the quality and quantity of sleep. So want to know what kind of sleeping music would do the trick. Read on.
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The recommended kind of sleeping music
Where sleeping music helps you maintain a shut-eye, some things remain common sense. You cannot expect to hit your biological snooze by listening to rock or heavy metal songs. Sounds below 95 decibels may sound music to our ears. Anything above that negatively affects our senses. Typically, listening to classical music helps you doze off. That means the tempo of sleeping music is important while selecting one. Sleep studies usually make use of relaxing classical music as sleeping music.
“Reputable studies find that music with a rhythm of about 60 beats a minute helps people fall asleep,” says Michael Breus, Ph.D., upwave sleep expert. He is also the author of The Sleep Doctor’s Diet Plan: Simple Rules for Losing Weight While You Sleep.
“As you are falling asleep, your heart rate begins to slow, and starts to move toward that 60-beats-per-minute range,” he adds.
“The better choice is often music with no words,” says Breus.
“Don’t listen to that mixtape that your old girlfriend once gave you,” Breus warns.
So instrumental sleeping music with no words should be played. Also, do not go for nostalgic songs that arouse strong emotions and keep you awake with old memories.
Sleeping music with a rhythm of 60-80 beats per minute is usually recommended. To find out the exact beats per minute of a song, enter the song title and the name of the singer into songbpm.com and find it out yourself. According to the latest poll-survey conducted by Spotify, the music streaming service, tracks by Ed Sheeran aced the top 20 songs to snooze to.
Some examples of sleeping music
Here is a sneak peek into some of the best tunes catering to sleeping music. Backed by research, these tunes calm your nerves down and put your body into a snooze mode.
- Marconi Union, Weightless
- Airstream, Electra
- Melomaniac by DJ Shah
- Watermark by Enya
- Strawberry Swing by Coldplay
- Please Don’t Go by Barcelona
- Pure Shores by All Saints
- Someone Like You by Adele
Final Verdict
Sleeping Music has established its footholds as a remedy for sleep disorders and irregularities. By syncing the tunes of music to the heartbeat, it induces a relaxing and calming effect by bringing actual physiological, hormonal and chemical changes in our body. An inexpensive tonic that does not cause any side effects, sleeping music is fast becoming the latest fad to regulate the sleep-wake cycle.
