While music probably won’t replace doctor-prescribed medication or therapies for sleep problems, you don’t need to have a sleep disorder or be musically inclined to try it for better sleep. So, with music and music therapy, we have special ways of addressing sleep by helping people induce a relaxation response.”

“Our brain likes predictability and thrives on patterning.

“Music therapy and its research in sleep is gaining traction as a novel, culturally sensitive, cost-effective, and safe intervention,” Joanne Loewy, a music therapist and founding director of the Louis Armstrong Center of Music and Medicine at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York, told BuzzFeed News. If listening to music before bed sounds like an appealing way to doze off, there are professionals - music therapists - who can help you use this technique successfully. Overall, 28% (among 218 respondents) use it regularly, while about 12% said they tried it but it didn’t work for them. We tried our own (decidedly unscientific) Twitter poll to see how many people use music to help them snooze. (The researchers noted their sample may not be representative of the general population.) A 2018 online survey of 615 adults published in the journal PLOS One found that 62% reported occasionally listening to music at night to help them sleep, 35% used it at least once a week, and 4% used it every night. If you can relate to the struggle, you might want to consider trying one medication-free approach: listening to music.ĭecades of research suggest that many kinds of music can help people fall asleep faster and improve overall sleep quality.

Poor sleep has been linked to a variety of health problems, including type 2 diabetes, heart failure, high blood pressure, depression, obesity, a compromised immune system, and low sex drive. Insomnia is the most common problem, affecting 1 in 3 adults at some point in their lives, and 1 in 10 chronically.

Up to 70 million adults in the US have a disorder that disrupts their sleep, according to the American Sleep Association, resulting in about $16 billion in medical costs each year. Most people spend about a third of their entire life asleep - but for many, the activity isn’t as natural or comforting as it could be.

Soft music to fall asleep