Is It Good To Listen To Music Before Going To Sleep?

Listening to music before sleeping is a very widespread practice. Why do not do it? At first glance it seems an ideal exercise to promote a night’s rest, it is less stimulating than watching a series or a movie and it relaxes us, it puts us in a state of pleasant well-being. Blues, jazz, some piano maybe or even that playlist with our favorite rock or pop singers. What would be wrong with it?

Well, the truth is that it is not as healthy as we thought. Yes there is something “bad” and that could also alter that architecture of sleep in which each stage is decisive to achieve a deep and restorative rest. What music actually does is leave an imprint on the brain, a stimulus that forces it to keep processing it for hours.

Those musical pieces, those voices, melodies and instruments remain in our mind like an echo. This often transforms into the phenomenon of earworms or earworms  or musical, which translate into the classic song that we cannot get out of our heads. It is annoying, disruptive and can completely alter our rest.

Why it is not good to listen to music before going to sleep

The term music or ear worm was an expression popularized by Stephen King. As he wrote in the media, he once woke up in the middle of the morning thirsty and exhausted. The day before he had donated blood and he thought that that tiredness and bad rest could be due to it. Suddenly, when he had a glass of water in his hand, he realized something.

He was singing over and over a song that he didn’t like. He couldn’t get it out of his head, it was like a worm running through his mind that he couldn’t stop. All for having stayed the night before listening to music. Indeed, this experience recounted by the master of terror is a common phenomenon that many of us have experienced at some time.

If it is common to suffer from the sticky song phenomenon during the day, it is more problematic if it happens at night. Let’s dive a little deeper into why listening to music before bed is not good.

A brain that never stops (even less when we are sleeping)

The brain is the worst workaholic. It is a factory that never closes, a workshop that is open 24 hours a day and a computer that never stands by . Moreover, if there is something you need, it is that we are asleep to be able to carry out decisive tasks of storing and destroying data and also cleaning cellular debris.

However, there are activities that we carry out the hours before going to sleep that make it difficult for us to do so. In this way, something that we were not entirely clear until now was whether listening to music before bed would benefit him or not.

It was the sleep researcher Michael Scullin, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University in Texas (United States) who has given us the answer through a study. The reality is this: playing music while in bed doesn’t really relax or promote restful sleep.

The brain will continue to process that music, even when we are no longer listening to it. The memory is reactivated every so often and those songs will come back to memory repeatedly. It’s an endless loop, as tiring as it is annoying.

Listening to music before going to sleep improves your mood, but does not promote your rest

This information is important. Something as simple as preparing your favorite playlist , making yourself comfortable in bed, turning off the lights and, finally, your eyes will not make you sleep better. Quite the opposite. It will stimulate your brain to the point of experiencing frequent awakenings.

That is the curious paradox associated with something that we all like, because few experiences are as pleasant as hearing that song that we like so much over and over again. We will feel good, the worry of the day and accumulated stress will be cleared up. However, when you leave your head on the pillow, in a few minutes, your mind will be the one that happens to repeat that song, that music over and over again.

What else can disturb your sleep at night?

We know that more than one may disagree with this study. However, on occasions, we carry out behaviors that we believe favor a night’s rest when, in fact, we achieve the opposite. It is therefore appropriate to take into account some practices that may be counterproductive to our dream:

• The nightly pecking. Eating, nibbling or preparing that chocolate shake before bed can be very negative.
• Rest doing series marathons. Although it is true that nothing appeals to us more at night than to watch a series or a movie, in reality, night exposure to screens makes it difficult to rest at night.
• Very high or very low temperatures. Sleeping in a room that is very hot or where the temperature is very low is also counterproductive.

In conclusion. Now that we know that listening to music before bed is not as beneficial as we thought, it is good to take into account one detail. The best sleep hygiene is not to hear or see anything before going to bed. The brain wants zero stimuli and a calm calm to lead us towards that dreamlike scenario in which, we rest as we deserve and it can work as needed.