Can Tunes Help my zzz’s?
Research on the relationship between music and sleep disorders
Some nights I lie down, and as soon as my head hits the pillow, my eyes shut closed and my brain switches into ‘sleep mode’, rejuvenating its juices for the next day’s set of challenges. But then there are other nights where I lie in bed ruminating about an upcoming test, a relationship problem, or an interview, and sleep completely escapes me. While thankfully I usually experience the former, sleeping a relaxing 6–7 hours, many people around the world cannot say the same. With around 40% of the U.K. and 50–70 million American adults suffering from disrupted sleep, insomnia and related conditions have astonishingly high rates. The ramifications can be devastating, when we live in a society that relies on constant alertness in order to effectively contribute to the workforce.
While some people are comfortable taking a sleeping pill, such as Ambien, to avoid counting sheep, if used too frequently these pills can have negative side effects such as dizziness, nausea, or withdrawal. While not everyone experiences these symptoms, buying sleeping pills consistently can become expensive, and c’mon…there must be a behavioral intervention that could help make the path to sleep more seamless.
A group of British researchers, Trahan, Durrant, Mullensiefen, and Williamson, noticed this predicament and decided to research how music can impact sleep. I mean we sing babies lullabies to lull them to sleep, so why should adults be any different? These researchers were well aware of previous research that demonstrates music’s ability to lower anxiety levels, and they hypothesized that heightened anxiety may be keeping you lying awake. A mixture of research currently exists on music’s ability to impact sleep, with contradictory findings, so our researchers set out to gather more information to help uncover this mystery. Specifically, Trahan et al. sought to investigate who is using music to help them sleep, what kind of music they choose, and why they believe that music helps improve sleep. By gathering this information, we will begin to uncover how music is currently being used as a behavioral intervention for sleeping disorders, and perhaps we can begin to evaluate its effectiveness.
Trahan et al. created an online questionnaire and recruited 651 participants who were willing to take part in the study. While there was no attempt to specifically recruit music users, it is likely that music users were disproportionately drawn to this type of survey. Each participant was asked to first answer four self-report scales that gathered background information about whether they use music to aid their sleep and if so, how often. Then, the participants answered custom-written questions about what type of music they use and the reasons they use music. Throughout these questionnaires, questions were tactfully included that measured the participant’s prior musical background and engagement, since we’d expect musicians to use music to fall asleep more than non-musicians.
Musical Training scores ranged from 7–49 with the higher number indicating a higher level of musical training, sleep scores ranged from 0–21, with a higher score indicating a poorer quality of sleep, and stress level scores ranged from 0–19 with a higher score showing higher stress levels.
But each of the 651 participants had to do further self-introspection by answering more open-ended questions about why they find music helpful in aiding in their falling asleep process. Three questions were presented to each of the participants: “please tell us what kinds of music help you sleep,” “why do you believe that music aids your sleep,” and “what are the ways in which you believe music aids your sleep.” Participants had to answer these questions both qualitatively and then quantitatively, meaning they got to first give open-ended responses to the questions, and they could then rank statements such as “music increases my sleep satisfaction” from 1–7. The participants were requested to give as much information as possible about what type of music they used to facilitate falling asleep quicker, in an attempt to gain as much information as possible.
The results of the study showed that a whopping 62% of participants used music to help them sleep. However, one caveat was that music-users tended to have higher musicality, meaning prior exposure or knowledge of music, so perhaps they were merely more accustomed to using music for all kinds of purposes, which happened to include sleep. The participants who used music to fall asleep more often, interestingly, also tended to have higher reported stress levels and poorer quality of sleep. When conducting statistical analyses on all the data that this survey collected, a significant relationship was found between stress, age, and using music to fall asleep. Since the study was not experimental, these results cannot tell us anything about causation, rather this implies that there is some unknown relationship between higher stress levels, younger age, and using music to fall asleep more often. The mediating variables that may lead younger individuals who are more stressed to use music to fall asleep are unknown, but as a young and admittedly stressed person myself, this seems to make sense. The younger generation has grown up with easily accessible music, thanks to Spotify, and the more stress you experience, the more you feel the need to mediate this internal experience with external calming stimuli (e.g. music).
I was particularly interested in the diversity of artists that the participants cited as using to fall asleep. The most mentioned artist was Johann Sebastian Bach, conducting beautiful classical pieces, but the next most mentioned is Ed Sheeran, whose pop hits could not be more different from Bach. The uniqueness of the genres, artists, and tempos in the music listed in the survey’s results may demonstrate how individuals differ in what they perceive as relaxing. While classical was the genre named most often, rock and pop were the next two, showing that there isn’t one set musical playlist that can put you to bed.
This study’s remarkably comprehensive survey demonstrated that both people suffering from chronic insomnia and those who like me, who sometimes struggle to fall asleep, are using music to help them transition to bed. People may differ in why they struggle to fall asleep, but due to the remarkable range of musical stimuli that exists, this is a non-pharmaceutical approach that many people are using. Whether or not music is actually impacting sleep quality or increasing the number of hours spent asleep is still unknown, and Trahan et al.’s research indicates the importance of examining this further. After all, we all want to wake up with as much energy as possible so we can live each day to the fullest. If music can aid in that process, let’s hit the tunes!
