Rocking beds can promote better sleep in adults

Everyone known that babies get a sound sleep when they are rocked to sleep in a rocking bed. A new study has said that it can also help the adults to sleep better. A research was conducted at the University of Geneva and had built a special bed that rocked gently throughout the night. The test was conducted on 18 young adults and found that they woke a fewer times and slept more deeply than on a normal bed.

The scientist explained that the rocking motion had resulted in a longer period of slow brainwaves that had caused deep sleep and also improved their memory. The volunteers who participated in the test had spent three nights at a sleep laboratory in Geneva. One was to get them used to sleep there, one on a rocking bed and the other on the same bed but in a still position.

The electrodes had recorded their brainwaves and had found that the period of sleep was extended by rocking. Laurence Bayer , the lead study of the author and researcher at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine pointed out that the rocking motion was slow enough and did not cause nausea. Bayer said, “A hammock would probably not be as efficient, although people often report a sense of relaxation when rocked in a hammock. In our paper we test the effect of rocking on one night, but we have no idea if the effects will still be there over a long-term period.”

It was also found by the researchers that the adults had better memory recall in the morning if they slept on a rocking bed. Another researcher, Aurore Perrault at the faculty said, “To see if this also affected memory, we subjected our participants to memory tests: they had to learn pairs of random words in the evening and remember them in the morning when they woke up. Here too, rocking proved beneficial: the test results were much better after a night in motion than after a still night.” The same experiment was conducted on mice as their cages were rocked when they went to sleep. It was found that the rocking reduced the time they needed to fall asleep.

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