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Are Frozen Peas the Answer to Better Sleep?
Icing your vagus nerve can help you overcome anxiety and beat the heat during hot summer nights.
If you suffer from summer insomnia, rest assured you are not alone. Because of the heat and extra hours of daylight, many people have trouble sleeping during the warmer months. It’s also common for people who struggle with anxiety and insomnia to wake up in a panic, which makes it harder to fall back to sleep.
If this is something you struggle with, you’ve likely tried every trick in the book to get a restful night’s sleep…or have you? TikTok user Frankie Simmons, or heyfrankiesimmons as she’s known on the platform, has an unusual solution for you to try that really works. And all you need is 15 minutes and a bag of frozen peas.
In a now-viral TikTok video, Frankie explains how cooling your vagus nerve with an ice pack or a frozen bag of peas is a game changer for insomniacs. If you haven’t heard of it before, the vagus nerve runs from your brain through your abdomen and essentially helps your brain communicate with the rest of your body. It is part of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for your fight or flight response and controls your ability to relax. By icing the nerve, you release inflammation, cool yourself down, allow the nerve to do its job better, and feel more relaxed.
Frankie said in her video that she used to always wake up in the middle of the night in a panic and it would take her hours to calm herself back down and feel comfortable enough to fall back to sleep. But now, all she has to do is take a frozen bag of peas or an ice pack, place it on her chest, and wait about 15 minutes to feel ready to snooze. While she waits, she scrolls through social media or watches television to quickly pass the time. If you don’t have a bag of peas or ice pack handy, a cold shower will also do the trick!
Will you be trying out this TikTok sleep hack? If you do, let us know how it goes on our social media!
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