Even as a child I had trouble sleeping. Nightmares, restless nights, and difficulties falling asleep, weighed on me. My parents’ advice to just close my eyes, didn’t help in the slightest. Being on my healing journey it is important to me to improve the quality of my sleep. A good night sleep gives our minds and bodies a better chance to regenerate. I had heard of the calming effects of lavender, so I got myself an oil diffuser, that I now use every night.
Aromatherapy is considered alternative medicine, which doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work, but often the slight shifts are hard to quantify. In my search of the literature, I found that the calming effect of lavender are not detect by monitoring the usual parameters but in the subjective evaluation of comfort/discomfort.
Since it is common to experience sleeping difficulties after surgery, those people were recruited for a trail to test the effects of lavender on sleep quality. They didn’t find any significant difference between lavender/ no-aromatherapy in the vital signs like blood pressure or heart rate which are expected to be down regulated when people are calmer and more relaxed. But they did find an improvement in reported quality of sleep via a questionnaire (1). Obviously, answers given in a questionnaire are subjective compared to measuring vital signs. But another study that focused on a questionnaire also reported positive effects of lavender sent on sleeping quality (2). The results are therefore replicated independently, which is a good sign.
In any case, all I care about is my subjective sleep experience, anyway. After I got used to the light and the sound coming from my oil diffuser, I found that I slept better. It is fortunate really that not all lifestyle changes have to be as drastic as taking cold showers, although it does help, read all about it in COLD showers – evidence shows it helps. For you to better track you own sleep quality, while experimenting with lifestyle changes, I put together a little printable. I hope it helps!
