The usual stressful and hectic holiday season has arrived — this year partnered with a pandemic, stay at home orders and jumbled routines. Is the quality of your sleep, rest, and relaxation impacting this stress level?

“Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.” — Thomas Dekker

Science knows a quality full night’s sleep boosts the immune system, can help weight management, improves memory and mood, and also improves exercise performance. Familiar to us are the cycles of sleep: rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM, which are cyclical during the night. REM sleep is about 20 percent of total sleep — it’s where dreams are remembered, heart rate and blood pressure increase and breathing is shallow and irregular. Non-REM sleep has 4 phases: transition to sleep, light sleep, first stage of deep sleep (where if awakened you will feel a bit disoriented) and finally deep sleep.

Looking a step further into better relaxation and sleep, the science of brain waves and accessing these different wave frequencies is becoming a player in health and fitness circles. We know brain waves from electroencephalograph (EEG) measurements which measures electrical activity of the brain. A frequency is the number of times the wave repeats itself per second — the more waves the more activity. The waves could be likened to the gears of a car: You need all of the gears from low to overdrive to have a functioning vehicle. The EEG refers the frequencies as bands expressed in Hertz (Hz) or 1 “cycle” per second.

Alpha waves (8-12 Hz) are present in relaxed, mentally calm states, and together with beta waves (above 12 HZ) are regarded as a normal wakeful state and associated with daily activities.

During deep sleep delta waves (0.1-3.5 Hz) are the dominant rhythm. These are increased to decrease our awareness of the physical world and allow the body to restore. Theta waves (3.5-7.5 Hz) are classified as slow activity seen with daydreaming, creativity, and intuition, making memories, and feeling emotions and sensations. Theta waves are stronger during meditation, prayer and spiritual awareness. Theta waves are normal during sleep. Theta waves are involved with healing, processing information and depositing memories.

So increasing theta waves would promote an extreme relaxed state, almost meditative, which in turn positively influences creativity, intuition and problem-solving — and may help one fall asleep.

Music and sounds have been studied and tracks made in hopes of influencing the deep relaxation and sleep of theta and delta waves. Brain-wave music is music generated from actual EEG signals to enhance the theta and delta waves. Brain-wave music is available on apps for sleep or meditation and many are found free on YouTube. Binaural beat (a technique of hearing a slightly different beat in each ear, causing your brain to create a separate tone from the difference of the original frequencies) have a following for inducing restful sleep and lowering anxiety, though without conclusive scientific evidence. Both are best used with ear buds or ear phones on, when already in bed, to promote sleep. Guided meditation, again found in apps or free on YouTube, and highly relaxing forms of meditative yoga are also avenues to explore to enhance quality sleep.

Speaking only for myself, I have a terrible time falling asleep. I started using Brain-wave music about two years ago and use a sleep app to track the quality of my sleep. I find that when I use the theta wave music — which only plays for about 40 minutes — I have the most restful sleep. I recently decided the ear buds weren’t my friends, so stopped listening to the app and had two weeks of the worst night sleeps on record. Personal experience only, but I’m sold.