Sleep is a slippery topic for lots of us right now, mainly because we’re not getting enough of it. A recent study found that post-pandemic, nearly half of the UK have trouble falling asleep at least once a month. It also revealed that 36% of UK adults struggle to get to sleep on a weekly basis, a fifth of us have difficulty nodding off every night and it affects women more than men. Awesome.
It’s no wonder Google has seen searches around sleep – and how to get more of it – soar in the past 18 months. It’s also no surprise that we’re on the lookout for solutions that can nab us some more shut-eye. Perhaps that’s why @heyfrankiesimmons’s TikTok video sharing a “life-changing” sleep hack has been watched over 3.2 million times.
In it, Frankie – a mind coach and the internet’s self-confessed “big sis” revealed, “a couple of years ago it was a very regular occurrence for me to wake up at 4am with anxiety all the time. And I’d have to pull myself up out of bed and do all this breath work and energy work and tea drinking, and spend forever trying to calm myself down to go back to sleep. And all that changed the day that I found out about icing your vagus nerve.”
Unfamiliar? “The vagus nerve is one of the longest nerves in your body and it controls a lot of your parasympathetic nervous system – AKA the nervous system in control of calming you down,” she explains. “So whenever we’re talking about nervous system regulation, it’s kind of the final boss because if [the vagus nerve] ain’t happy, nobody’s happy.”
Frankie explains: “Applying cold to our vagus nerve helps to release inflammation, it stimulates [the vagus nerve] and helps it do its job better. You can do this by taking ice-cold showers. You can do this by taking dips in ice-cold lakes. But, if you want to save yourself the discomfort, just put an ice pack on the centre of your chest. Wrap it in a towel, put it right there, lie down for at least 15 minutes […] and it is [chef’s kiss] a game-changer.”
She goes on to reveal, “ I swear when I found this, an hour and a half of trying to calm myself down to get back to sleep when I woke up at 4am, turned into 15 minutes. I didn’t even have an ice pack at the time, I would just go to the freezer, get a pack of peas, put it between my boobs and I’d be back out in no time. It changed my life. I want everybody to know about this magic.”
It sounds too good to be true, but it turns out there’s some science behind it. Dr Steffen Fetzer, a senior medical affairs manager at LivaNova PLC, a medical device company, told Patient.Info: “The vagus nerve is part of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). And as the key nerve pathway of the parasympathetic division of the ANS, the vagus nerve is responsible for the body’s relaxing response – for example, after a stressful situation.”
Multiple studies have shown that Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) can aid relaxation and even reduce depression and we know that relaxation is key to drifting off, so techniques that limit anxiety can make a huge difference to our sleep quality.
VNS refers specifically to stimulation using electrical pulses (like a pacemaker), however further research has found that there are other ways to stimulate the vagus nerve, which include slow breathing (longer exhales than inhales) and cold temperatures. And a separate study found that vagus nerve stimulation can also boost melatonin, the hormone that helps us fall asleep.
Further research is needed to bring all these separate findings together and confirm the effect of cold compresses (such as ice packs) on our vagus nerve, and furthermore on our melatonin and relaxation response, but Frankie’s findings make logical sense.
Which means, next time you’re struggling to sleep, you could always try grabbing an ice pack and conducting a little scientific research of your own.
For more from GLAMOUR’s Deputy Beauty Editor, Elle Turner follow her on Instagram @elleturneruk