Science behind the effect | Effects of nature sounds on sleep quality | Achieving relaxation with nature sounds
If you struggle with sleep and are looking for a natural solution, you will be happy to know that there is a very simple answer to your woes. Studies have found that nature sounds can help you to relax effectively to help improve sleep.
It has been known for ages that sounds of nature can calm the mind. People have always experienced the relaxing effect of walking in a forest or listening to the sound of water running down a gentle stream. You, too, may have your own experience with the gentle sound of wind whistling through leaves on a pleasant day. As we will see, scientific findings reveal that nature sounds can physically modify the connections in the brain, which reduces the body’s natural instinct of fight-or-flight.
Science behind the effect
A noted research article(1) investigated the difference between the effects of nature sounds and manmade sounds on our brain. To understand how the sounds affect the body and the brain, 17 healthy adult test subjects were used. Scans measured brain activity while they listened to 5-minute long artificial and natural sounds. As they listened, the participants performed a given task to help measure their reaction and attention time. Their heart rates were also measures to record any changes to their nervous systems, which is made of the organs responsible for the processes like breathing, temperature, blood pressure, digestion, and metabolism.
The results revealed that the activity in their brain area that controls the resting state and mind wandering varied depending on if they were listening to nature sounds or artificial sounds. The artificial sounds increased worrying about personal things. This is linked to psychological stress, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression.
On the other hand, sounds of nature evoked pleasantness. It also influenced faster reaction time, compared to when the participants listened to artificial sounds. Minor differences were detected in heart rate also which indicates faster reactions.
The results noted that the emotional response was reduced in the case of listening to nature sounds, which lowered the “fight-or-flight” instinct. Nature sounds also helped increase the body function responsible for relaxation. One interesting take away from the research was that people who already had higher levels of stress benefited most from nature sounds compared to the test subjects who had lower stress levels to begin with.
Therefore, due to its ability to reduce stress and the fight-or-flight reaction, nature sounds can certainly help calm you and improve your sleep quality. However, this is not the only scientific research that suggests nature sounds can help to promote better sleep. Read on for more scientific explanations around this topic.
Effects of nature sounds on sleep quality
One of the most significant studies(2) was performed on the patients hospitalized in coronary care units to study how nature sounds can influence better sleep. The main reason these patients were selected as test subjects was because sleep disorders are a very common cause of stress among them. The study aimed at understanding how the sounds of nature affected the quality of sleep among 93 participating patients admitted in the CCUs of three teaching hospitals in the Iranian city of Tehran.
The patients were divided randomly into three sections: nature sounds group, control group, and silence group. While the patients belonging to the nature group listened to nature sounds for half an hour in two successive nights, the patients from the silence group were given sound-canceling headphones. Participants belonging to the control group were neither given the headphones nor listened to sounds of nature.
To evaluate sleep quality and sleep perception for two days before and during the study, a very effective five-item visual analogue scale(3) was used. The perceptions include depth of sleep, number of awakenings, sleep onset latency, overall sleep quality, and time spent awake.
The sleep quality during the first two nights and the last two nights were considered as the pre- and post-test sleep quality. The collected data was analyzed using different tests. The differences in the posttest-pretest sleep quality (the number of awakenings, sleep depth, and the returning to sleep) was significantly higher in the participants belonging to the nature sounds group compared to the control group. The differences between the pretest and posttest sleep latency, total sleep quality, and subjective sleep quality in the control group were rather low compared to both the silence and nature sounds groups.
Therefore, the study concluded that nature sounds can significantly improve sleep quality.
Achieving relaxation with nature sounds
According to Orfeu Buxton, associate professor of Biobehavioral Health at Pennsylvania State University, slow natural noises are the sounds of non-threats, which makes them relaxing and effective in calming down people. That is why natural sounds like the pitter-patter of rain on the shingles or the crash of ocean waves have the ability to help you fall asleep and reduce stress. The same has been proven by scientific research.
Another research article(4) explains the effects of nature sounds on psychological stress being similar to the positive influence of visual imitations of natural environments compared with urban settings. Here, 40 participants were given stressful mental mathematical tasks and then exposed to noisy environments or natural sounds.
To catalogue the results, the Skin Conductance Level (SCL) was used for sympathetic activation and High Frequency Heart Rate Variability (HF HRV) was used for parasympathetic activation. The HF HRV did not show any effect. However, the SCL showed faster recovery from stress when listening to nature sounds compared to the noisy environments.
The nature sounds selected for the study were of tweeting birds and a running fountain. The noises chosen for the study included dense traffic, the same traffic noise with lower sound pressure, and low level ambient noise.
The primary goal of the study was to understand if nature sounds can help with faster recovery from psychological stress. The end result showed that nature sounds are significantly more effective in doing so than traffic noise. Another study(5) shows preliminary proof that the effect of listening to water sounds on stress can be enhanced by the presence of somatic complaints.
The findings of these studies offer hope for people who struggle with sleep. They show that playing natural sounds have the ability to change our bodily systems and mind, resulting in a more serene and at-peace state.
What’s next?
Do you struggle to get restful sleep night after night? Is it affecting your daily life? Ruhgu app offers a broad collection of relaxing sacred sounds and divine music to calm your mind and help you fall asleep faster for better, deeper, and more restful sleep.
References
- Scientific Reports: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep45273
- Nursing and Midwifery Studies: http://www.nmsjournal.com/article.asp?issn=2322-1488;year=2018;volume=7;issue=1;spage=18;epage=23;aulast=Nasari
- STOP, THAT and One Hundred Other Sleep Scales: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4419-9893-4_73#:~:text=Abstract,awake%2C%20and%20overall%20sleep%20quality.
- International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2872309/
- Medicine (Baltimore): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5842016/#:~:text=Only%20recently%2C%20some%20studies%20have,endocrine%20and%20autonomous%20nervous%20system.
