Umbrella Production's video: Deep Sleep Sound Relaxing Sleep Music

How binaural beats might improve sleep Brainwave activity during sleep is largely distinct from brain activity when you’re awake. (REM sleep is an exception: During REM, your brain is active in ways very much like when you’re awake.) During non-REM sleep, the slower, lower frequency theta and delta waves dominate, compared to the alpha and beta waves that are prominent when you’re alert and active. A therapy that slows brainwave activity, helping to produce low-frequency waves, is likely to aid relaxation and sleep. But it’s not only lowering brainwave frequency that binaural beats may offer to sleep and relaxation. A small study (19 people) has found that exposure to binaural beats is associated with changes to three hormones important to sleep and well-being: DHEA. DHEA functions as a kind of master hormone, helping to produce other hormones in the body on an as-needed basis. DHEA is critical to immune function and disease protection. Particularly significant for sleep is that DHEA works to suppress cortisol, a hormone that stimulates alertness and provokes stress at elevated levels. The study found that 68 percent of participants had increases to DHEA after using binaural beats. Cortisol.Cortisol is an arousal hormone, stimulating alertness and attention. Cortisol levels rise and fall in connection to circadian rhythms—cortisol levels rise to their peak levels first thing in the morning, just in time for you to be active for the day. Too-high cortisol levels are associated with insomnia, as well as more time spent in light sleep, rather than deep sleep. The study found that 70 percent of participants experienced a reduction in cortisol after exposure to binaural beats. Melatonin. Melatonin promotes and regulates sleep. Melatonin levels rise dramatically in the evening, and the hormone works to relax your body and mind, preparing you to fall asleep. The study found 73 percent of participants had higher levels of melatonin after using binaural beats. The average increase was more than 97 percent. In addition to potentially boosting sleep-promoting hormones, binaural beats may also reduce our perceptions of pain. A 2017 study found that binaural beats used in combination with visual stimulation led to reductions in patients’ perception of acute pain. Other recent research showed binaural beats helped improve pain perception in patients with chronic pain. This is good news on its own—and also promising news for sleep. Pain often interferes with sleep (and poor sleep can make pain worse), so reducing pain is one effective way to improve sleep. What are binaural beats? Sounds like a new music genre, right? Not exactly. Binaural beats are a technique of combining two slightly different sound frequencies to create the perception of a single new frequency tone. The theory is that when exposed to two different frequencies at the same time, one in each ear, the brain actually perceives a single tone that is the difference between the two separate frequencies. Your brain, in a sense, “tunes” to this new frequency. You listen to binaural beats using headphones. In each ear, you receive sound at a slightly different frequency (often accompanied by some relaxing background sounds). If your left ear receives a 300-hertz tone and your right ear receives a 280-hertz tone, your brain will process and absorb a 10-hertz tone. That’s a very low-frequency soundwave—one you can’t actually hear. But you don’t need to hear the sound for your brain to be affected by it. Why is exposure to these soundwaves helpful to sleep and relaxation? Science shows that exposure to binaural beats can create changes in the brain’s degree of arousal. Listening to these sounds that create a low-frequency tone, research indicates, triggers a slow-down to brainwave activity—and that may help you relax, lower your anxiety, and make it easier for you to fall asleep and sleep more soundly.