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30 thoughts on “Can Weighted Blankets Help Insomnia?”
  1. I LOVE my weighted blanket, it absolutely has improved my sleep. I sleep hot, though, so I only use it in the summer. But in the wintertime I sleep sooooo good now.

  2. I think the combo of weighted blankets and cool room air (e.g. open window — when not unbearable due to climate), REALLY helps me.

    Swaddling infants help them sleep and feel "coddled".

    The well know Dr. Temple Grandin built a "hug" machine which give her comfort and calms her down when she's over-stimulated.

  3. I have no idea whether my weighted blanket helps me to sleep better or not; but I just really love the FEELING of being under extra weight like that. I honestly want another or a heavier one.

  4. Is there any good research on the physical effects of weighted blankets? I tried several, and kept waking up with aching muscles or a pain in my gut, even after over a month of getting used to the blanket. Tried multiple weights too, most of which were well under the recommended for my size, and still had trouble…
    As a result, I'm now quite worried that all that weight pressing down on my gut for 8 hours a night was maybe not the best; or the weight on my lungs may have made it more difficult to breathe, which is already a bit of an issue for me.

  5. I have ADHD, depression, and anxiety. Coming home from a very sensory overloaded day at work and getting under my weighted blanket makes a HUGE difference for me in coming back to a neutral place mentally. It may be placebo, but like you said there is no harm from it. I love my weighted blanket.

  6. With all the money floating around it seems like this shouldn't be that hard to research. Why hasn't this been knocked out already?

    In general why isn't there some kind of fund to research natural accessible treatments for insomnia, it's such a huge problem.

  7. It seems to me that they would be better off choosing test subjects with the same additional/underlying disorder. If the insomnia tends to be cured by alleviating the underlying condition, then the makeup of conditions in the intervention and placebo groups will determine the results, not the intervention itself. To elaborate with examples, if (hypothetically) ADHD is cured more consistently than depression and in doing so tends to resolve the insomnia, then having a larger % of ADHD patients in the intervention group than the control group would give the intervention group a better result. Given the small study size and the mix of disorders listed, it seems likely that the control and intervention groups had different % of each disorder.

    So in summary, unless they accounted for this and you didn't describe it, it sounds like a badly designed study.

  8. If you roll a weighted blanket up and put it next to you it makes the squishing of the bed feel like when someone is laying there so you don't feel alone

  9. I like the "why not" conclusion here. I often say similar things where there is limited evidence it works but it's not harmful so go for it.

  10. I realize nutrition science is…yeah. Lol. But if there are any sound advisements on dietary modifications for managing anxiety, please do share them! Thank you for your informative content. 🙂

  11. Caution if you have feet issues. I kept making my hip bursitis worse and started having a sore ankles without realizing that my blankets were too heavy once I switched to winter mode last year. It was putting pressure all the way down to the feet. After I switched to lighter ones thanks to a heated blanket that kept me as warm without the weight, the bursitis and ankle finally got better. Even spent a week with huge inflation in both front legs and unable to walk due to that phenomena (which triggered my experimentation for solutions). So if you start having issues (especially people who also have fibromyalgia like me who might be oversensitive), at least rule that out. 😉

  12. I like weighted blankets, but I overheat too easily. I can only use them while I'm awake snuggling in my chair in the winter. Too hot for sleep.

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