Does music help you fall asleep?

Difficulties falling asleep are among the most common sleep disorders and can usually be traced back to stress and a lack of relaxation. Calming music or gentle meditations are considered effective remedies for stress-related difficulties falling asleep. You can find out here how music really helps you fall asleep and how certain sounds can have a positive effect on sleep.

Table of Contents

1. Difficulty falling asleep
2. Hearing during sleep
3. The effect of music
1. This is how music affects the body and mind
2. This is how music affects sleep
4. Conclusion

1. Trouble falling asleep

One in five Germans suffers from sleep disorders and their numerous negative consequences for our quality of life, everyday life, performance and our health. An irregular sleep-wake rhythm, stress or even an incorrect sleeping environment can disrupt our regeneration at night or prevent us from getting a restful sleep. Stress in particular disrupts our evening relaxation and is often responsible for the fact that we find it difficult to fall asleep despite being tired. If it regularly takes longer than 30 minutes to fall asleep after going to bed, experts speak of problems falling asleep. You can find further information and tips on the topic of sleep disorders here.

Numerous home remedies are known to promote the process of falling asleep in a natural way and listening to music is also considered by some people to be an effective method of calming down and getting in the mood for sleep. But can music really be effective in helping you fall asleep?

2. Hearing during sleep

During sleep, our brain runs at full speed and our senses remain active. This means that our hearing also reacts to acoustic stimuli in our environment while we are sleeping and falling asleep and transmits the perceived signals to the brain. Noise, noises and other acoustic signals activate the nervous system and tend to counteract sleep, which is why a sleeping environment that is as quiet as possible is generally recommended. So can music actually have a positive effect on sleep?

3. The effect of music

This is how music affects the body and mind

How a certain type of music affects us is usually very individual and depends on our personal taste in music. Music generally affects us humans in different ways and can have both a calming and stimulating effect on our mood and well-being. The reason for this lies in our natural emotional response to musical sounds. These activate the emotion-forming limbic system of our brain and, for example, promote the release of stress-relieving hormones. Studies also show that listening to music also affects our physical well-being and influences, among other things, our heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure and muscle tension. Calm and melodic sounds can promote both mental and physical relaxation, especially in stressful states, by activating positive emotions, lowering our blood pressure and pulse and slowing breathing.

This is how music affects sleep

Because excitement and stress hinder the process of falling asleep, it is important to calm down and relax sufficiently before going to bed. If we concentrate on pleasant or calming music while falling asleep, it is easier to block out disturbing stimuli from our sleeping environment as well as negative thoughts and feelings on an emotional and physical level. This calms, promotes relaxation and can support the undisturbed process of falling asleep.

To encourage you to fall asleep, you should generally focus on calming and slow songs or rhythms that do not involve major dynamic changes or sudden changes in sound. Especially when a noise stands out in an otherwise quiet sound environment, our brain reacts very quickly and puts us on alert, which disrupts the process of falling asleep and wakes us up. Depending on which phase of sleep we are in, the sensitivity of our hearing to stimuli can vary. This means that music that is perceived as pleasant while falling asleep can disturb sleep at a later point in time and lead to awakening.

Tip: Try using a timer or timer function to reduce the volume after a while or turn off the music completely.

4. Can music help you fall asleep?

Whether music ultimately works as an effective sleep aid varies from person to person and basically depends on the reasons why we lie awake and how sensitive we react to external acoustic stimuli while we sleep. Due to their calming effect, melodic and calm music as well as meditation are usually well suited to counteract stress and a lack of relaxation and to accompany a peaceful fall asleep process. Listening to relaxing sounds and melodies or your favorite songs can then easily be integrated into your evening routine in order to quickly and easily find a restful sleep.

Also interesting: How diet influences falling asleep.

5. Conclusion

• The hearing also processes sounds and noises during sleep, which is why a quiet sleeping environment is generally recommended.

• Music has an individual effect on people, activates the emotional system and influences important body functions such as pulse, heart rate and breathing.

• Calm melodies or meditations can promote relaxation before sleep and make the process of falling asleep easier.

Greetings and see you soon!