Dr. Matt Walker

And it's more enriched in the slower frequencies.

domain of that power spectrum which you could argue is a bit more fitting with sleep and i think this study may have been a nap study or i may be wrong but anyway what they found was that they increased total sleep time by i think it was close to 30 minutes with the pink noise

They did not change the amount of deep sleep, but they did enhance the amount of stage two non-REM sleep, which we have spoken about before and we will in subsequent episodes that is beneficial for things like learning and memory, including motor skills.

And they increased the amount of REM sleep to a much more modest degree.

But those changes were significant.

So...

i'm not trying to rule out noise machines right now and i have no affiliation with any company or anything in that space um i don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water i just simply think that right now that we don't have enough evidence but as you and i know as scientists absence of evidence is not evidence of absence just because it doesn't exist doesn't mean that i don't think that it's still a potential route these types of machines

Come on social media, just be nice, be friendly.

I would say that if you look back in, again, the annals of human history,

From the very early inception, you will see mentions of a child being rocked in a manger or rocked in a crib.

Often parents will take their young infant and you will, quote unquote, rock them to sleep.

And we as adults will sometimes get in a hammock.

And if you're rocked, what happens?

You will fall asleep.

It's that prototypical image of someone with a hat over their face and in a hammock and they've sort of fallen asleep.

So it was very clear that something was going on in this space.

And then a group from the University of Geneva led by another fantastic sleep scientist, Sophie Schwartz, did an epic study that again, it's one of those studies that I probably once more wished I'd done.

Here's what they did.

They took a bed frame and then they suspended it on chains from the ceiling.

Now stick with me, I'm not going in that, you know, there's no hot candle wax being applied here.