United States: Recent findings suggest that a brief exposure to extreme cold might promote deeper sleep. Researchers from Canada and France found that just five minutes of daily cold therapy can improve sleep quality.
More about the news
The research was carried out by the researchers of the University of Montreal and the University of Poitiers to identify the favorable impact of the daily probe of full-body “cryostimulation.”
The researchers followed the healthy volunteers in the lab and documented the duration and quality of sleep that the people had while they were under cold therapy, gizmodo.com reported.
The research indicates that cryostimulation could well be a viable treatment for those who have sleep disturbances, as the authors state.
In the present study, nine women and eleven men participated, and all of the participants were in their twenties.
Seven volunteers disrobbed and stood in a chamber at the temperature of -130 Fahrenheit (-90 degrees C) for five minutes at 6 p.m. for five days in a row.
They otherwise lived their day as normal, but it was a day of no alcohol, caffeine, or any substance that might have an impact on their night’s rest.
The contestants were then fitted with devices that monitored their heart rate, brain waves, and sleep as they moved to bed.
More about the research
They also completed questionnaires on the quality of sleep they had over the course of the study.
For comparison’s sake, the volunteers endured the same tracking procedure a second time but could not receive any cold therapy before sleep this time, gizmodo.com reported.
The volunteers indicated they felt better after cryostimulation, but not immediately, as the scientists only observed subjective changes in outcomes after the fifth cryostimulation session.
The largest difference noted was with slow-wave, or even delta, sleep, the most restorative stage of sleeping. In particular, on average, cryostimulation added 7.3 minutes of such sleep to a person’s night, the researchers discovered; people get an average of two hours of this type of sleep per night.