what is the science behind weighted blankets and how do they reduce anxiety?
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Occupational Therapy Student here! Weighted blankets help relieve anxiety by providing “input” for your body to recognize through your proprioceptive system. This system tells your brain where your body is in space. If you have the weighted blanket across ur legs for example, you have more signals (due to the pressure from the blanket) carrying that sensation to your brain. It’s provides a calming sensation for those who need more of this system stimulated to feel comfortable. They should be 8-10% of your body weight. I’ve seen it done wonders. I even use one. Highly recommend.
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Hugs increase happy chemicals in the brain. Weighted blankets feel like a hug. Even pressure keeps people grounded, and makes them feel safe. Also you move around less at night under weight, so you fall asleep faster. (For people who toss and turn and can’t fall asleep quickly due to their brain getting alertness jolts every time they turn, less effective for non-anxious people.)
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Finally a question for an Occupational Therapist! We are the experts on weighted blankets and pediatric OTs have been using them for many many years before they suddenly became trendy. Weight (a blanket, a compression shirt, a hug, a dog sitting on your lap/chest, carrying heavy books) all give your body proprioceptive input. Proprioceptive input basically tells your body where you are in space. When someone has a lot of proprioceptive input it can be calming to ones nervous system as your body “knows” where it is.
There is actually a TON of research on weight but it’s mostly in OT journals 😉
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I’m really glad people are getting cool gifts for Christmas (Merry Christmas, by the way), including weighted blankets… but this isn’t the appropriate place to share that story.
The mods don’t like doing mod work like removing rule breaking comments and banning people, so if you could chip in to help us out by not making those comments so we can go back to being lazy on Christmas that’d be great. Thank you.
Edit: Sorry guys, tired of banning people and deleting rule breaking comments on Christmas. Thread locked now.
Something to do with the vagus nerve that is responsible for the somatic sensations of having your ‘heart in your mouth’, you ‘stomach dropping’, feeling like your ‘insides are jelly’, and ‘butterflies in your stomach’. A lot of people describe existential anxiety as a mind and body experience akin to ‘floating/swinging through space’. A lot of existential anxiety tends to be pushed into people’s subconscious so they might experience it in their unconscious state of dreaming where we have less control over our thoughts and cognitions. I’m not sure if it’s always trauma related, but it seems to work a lot like trauma and how we see that play itself out in PTSD and PTSD related nightmares and/or dreams. A weighted blanket would aid in regaining that ‘solid’ feeling of gravity ‘holding you down’ and ‘grounding’ you. I have read that bodily grounding mental exercises are used a lot by those experiencing the onset of an anxiety attack.
I think ultimately it makes you feel more safely ensconced in a ‘protective cocoon’, which Anthony Giddens describes in *Self Identity and Modernity* as a sense of ‘ontological security’ (as opposed to ontological *in*security defined by R.D. Laing in *The Divided Self*). I suppose that we carry with us a physical, mental, and emotional memory of being in the womb that is somewhat replicated by the feeling of a weighted blanket.
It’s difficult to say for sure; there aren’t many studies on weighted blankets, and the ones there are don’t draw the kinds of conclusions you’re looking for. Most are just “Do the blankets help” rather than “Why do the blankets help”.
It is commonly recognized a weighted blanket can calm people down, [but the only studies I’ve found relate to specific groups](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32204779/). These include people with sensory issues or anxiety, as you’ve mentioned.
In terms of the mechanism, scientists are throwing some theories at the wall and seeing what sticks. Maybe the blanket reminds us of being a baby, tightly bundled and safe. Maybe the blanket restricts movement, forcing people who would otherwise toss and turn to calm down. Maybe it’s all in our heads, and we just relax because weighted blankets are “supposed” to relax us. Maybe it’s just cause it feels like a hug. Until there are more studies, we can’t know for sure.
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