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Feeling Stressed? Neuroscience Says What You (Don’t) Do for the Next 2 Minutes Will Make You Feel Calmer and More Relaxed
Jeff Haden
4–5 minutes

I hate a friend who despises silence. Wake up: music. In the car: music. Walking: music or podcasts. In his house: music, or TV for background noise. In bed: sleep sound machine. And that’s when things are going well. When he feels stressed, he turns up the volume.

Which is all fine, until it isn’t.

First, take noise you don’t choose. According to a study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, one out of three people are exposed to unhealthy levels of environmental noise that can lead to hearing loss, stress, sleep disruption, and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. (I worked in noisy factories for 20 years and was dumb enough to avoid wearing earplugs whenever possible.)

Then there’s noise you choose. A Journal of Applied Psychology study found that workers who wear headphones are less productive, even if they don’t think so.

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Add it all up, and while you may not notice because the environment you experience, and create, makes amount of sound you experience seem normal, your baseline stress level tends to be higher, and your level of focus lower.

Fortunately there’s a relatively easy fix. You don’t have to go all silence, all the time:

A little silence is good. A study published in the journal Heart found that experiencing a two-minute period of silence after listening to music significantly reduced a participant’s heart rate and blood pressure, even more so than slow, relaxing music. My friend can still listen to music; he just needs to mix in an occasional silence break.
A little more silence is better. A Johns Hopkins study found silence leads to lower stress markers and even stimulates neurogenesis (the growth of new brain cells) in the hippocampus, a region associated with memory and emotion. A bigger brain? Seems worth the silence trade-off.
Especially if you need to focus. An Indoor Air study found that participants who performed tasks requiring concentration experienced the least cognitive load and lowest stress levels in silent environments compared with those with background noise.
And want to feel less stressed. A Progress in Brain Research study shows engaging in regular periods of silence activates your body’s parasympathetic nervous system, promoting relaxation and reducing stress. (Silence lets you better process emotions, which leads to improved mental clarity and decision-making.)

Hate silence? Hate walking around a quiet house? Feel uncomfortable driving when the car is quiet? That’s fine. You can still listen to music, podcasts, etc. Once in a while, though, turn the sound off, even if just for a couple minutes.

That’s especially true when you feel stressed: if you’re ever instinctively turned the music down in your car when you’re trying to navigate a route, or left a noisy room so you could think, you already know — possibly without consciously realizing it — that silence can sometimes be helpful.

Reducing the level of noise around you results in greater drops in quantifiable measures of relaxation like blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing rate than many other relaxation techniques.

The next time you feel stressed, don’t try to distract yourself with sound. Sit with silence for a few minutes while you reframe the problem and decide — because it is a choice — how you will respond, both emotionally and practically.

Science says you’ll be glad you did.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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