Why does rain seem to make you sleepy? - Deepstash
Why does rain seem to make you sleepy?

Why does rain seem to make you sleepy?

Curated from: qz.com

Ideas, facts & insights covering these topics:

6 ideas

·

2.11K reads

39

Explore the World's Best Ideas

Join today and uncover 100+ curated journeys from 50+ topics. Unlock access to our mobile app with extensive features.

The connection between rain and sleep

The connection between rain and sleep

Most people seem to be sleepy when the weather is dark and rainy. For the longest time I've had my own theory about it but I also decided to do some research. Here is the best explanation I could find for why rain and sleep go together.

Bonus - see the last idea for my own, unproven theory.

36

976 reads

Less sun, more melatonin

Less sun, more melatonin

The absence sunlight triggers our bodies to stop producing the hormone melatonin, which makes us sleepy at night. When it’s raining and skies are overcast, we miss out on our body’s internal alarm clock. 

Naomi Rogers, a chronobiologist from Central Queensland University, told the Sydney Morning Herald, that when you don’t see the sunlight first thing in the morning, your body never gets the cue that it needs to shift into daytime mode.

40

298 reads

The smell of rain

The smell of rain

Earthy smell of rain can be soothing. Plants secrete oils during dry periods, possibly to stop seeds from developing when there aren’t enough resources for them to thrive. When it rains, the water brings out the accumulated oils and they mix with a chemical called geosemin, which is produced by soil bacteria, to create a “musky” smell.

Bill Ypsilantis, a soil condition and health specialist at the Bureau of Land Management, told NPR that this is the same smell you feel when turning over the soil.

36

201 reads

Thunder & Ozone

Thunder & Ozone

Also there is the smell of ozone - a molecule made of three oxygen atoms, generated when lightning interacts with the air, breaking up and recombining oxygen molecules with two atoms into chains of three instead.

It also creates a powerful association with rain.

36

197 reads

The sound of rain

The sound of rain

Rain sounds are also comforting. The rhythmic pitter-pattern of rain hitting a roof, umbrella, or the ground below is called pink noise. Pink noise is a category of background noise that, like white noise, has all of the frequencies that humans can hear, ranging from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. Unlike white noise, which has the same volume at every frequency, pink noise has lower volumes at higher frequencies, which according to some research may improve our quality of sleep by decreasing our brain activity.

39

173 reads

The theory of laziness

The theory of laziness

So the combination of melatonin, smell and sound creates the conditions for being sleepy.

My own theory has to do with preservation of energy. If it rains most animals have a harder time to foridge for food or you can even get sick if you prance around in the rain. 

If you can't eat you better not spend energy. And what better way to do it except by spending a rainy day in a borrow or our own beds? I think we just evolved to be lazy during rainy days. I still like my theory, although there is no proof for it.

39

271 reads

IDEAS CURATED BY

liviu

My interests are many and eclectic. Product guy.

Liviu Lica's ideas are part of this journey:

Cracking the Interview

Learn more about scienceandnature with this collection

How to showcase your skills and experience

How to answer common interview questions

How to make a good first impression

Related collections

Read & Learn

20x Faster

without
deepstash

with
deepstash

with

deepstash

Personalized microlearning

100+ Learning Journeys

Access to 200,000+ ideas

Access to the mobile app

Unlimited idea saving

Unlimited history

Unlimited listening to ideas

Downloading & offline access

Supercharge your mind with one idea per day

Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.

Email

I agree to receive email updates