Does Lavender Help You Sleep?

In the last few years, I’ve noticed a growing number of lavender products: oils, sprays, teas, candles, body creams – it crops up everywhere.

Lavender is often marketed as helping with relaxation and sleep. But can this colorful plant really improve your beauty sleep, or is it just a beautifully packaged myth?

In this article, I’ll be looking at the scientific evidence behind lavender’s sedative power. And I’ve spent the last week using a lavender bedroom spray, so I’ll also be talking about my personal experience of ending the day with the scent of lavender in the air.

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The research evidence

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A review of previous experiments

A useful piece of research was done by British researchers Karen Pilkington and Kate Louise Fismer in 2012.

They conducted a review of eight previous scientific experiments in which lavender was inhaled, rather than ingested or applied to the skin. And they found evidence in several of those studies that lavender can improve sleep, stating:

Reporting of a small to moderate benefit favouring lavender oil across a cross-section of study populations was found…findings were suggestive of a small benefit for lavender oil compared to control.

Interestingly, two of the studies they looked at used polysomnogram tests in a sleep lab, considered the gold standard of sleep assessment.

One of those, conducted in 2005 at Wesleyan University, found an increase in deep sleep and reduced awakenings in both men and women. It’s an experiment that’s often quoted as evidence that lavender works.

However, the authors did find some issues with the overall quality of the eight research studies, saying:

Methodological inadequacies, small sample sizes, short duration, and challenges related to blinding, mean that results should be viewed with caution…As a result no definitive conclusions can be made regarding the efficacy of lavender oil aroma for sleep.

Despite that rather pessimistic conclusion, they also say that the mounting evidence in favor of lavender’s sleep promoting qualities warranted further research.

Lavender oil improves the sleep of postpartum women

In 2015, researchers in Iran conducted an experiment involving 158 women following childbirth.

The participants inhaled either lavender or a placebo every night for a total of 8 weeks. And the results showed that the women who inhaled lavender had improved sleep after 8 weeks:

The authors concluded that:

Comparing sleep quality between control and intervention groups after 8 weeks from the beginning of the intervention indicated that aromatherapy was effective in the improvement of mothers’ sleep quality

Evidence for aromatherapy in general

Considering how often lavender is used in the form of aromatherapy, it’s also worth looking at the research evidence for aromatherapy in general.

Like the specific studies with lavender, there have been many experiments done with a range of different plant oils. However, despite positive results coming from specific studies, reviews of the way the experiments were done once again point to inconclusive evidence.

For example, Dr. Edzard Ernst at the University of Exeter undertook a research study review in 2012. He identified 201 published studies of aromatherapy, of which only 10 met the standards to include in the review.

And the overall view was once again that the evidence was lacking:

The clinical subject areas were hypertension, depression, anxiety, pain relief, and dementia… Due to a number of caveats, the evidence is not sufficiently convincing that aromatherapy is an effective therapy for any condition.

How does lavender oil work? Research sheds some light

Lavender oil contains monoterpenes like linalool and linalyl acetate, chemicals that are rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream. Studies on mice have shown that these compounds inhibit several neurotransmitters and have a sedative and pain-relieving effect.

In 2017, research published by Victor Lopez and colleagues at the University of San Jorge in Spain shed new light on how lavender works in the human body:

Our study reveals for the first time that lavender exerts receptor binding affinities with a relevant activity on the NMDA receptor. According to our data, we can state that the anti-agitation and antidepressant activities of lavender may be attributed at least in part to the NMDA receptor modulation as well as an inhibition of the SERT

So despite some of the pessimistic views of previous research, scientists seem to be able to demonstrate that lavender oil can indeed have an observable, positive effect on people.

My lavender spray test

Using lavender to help me get to sleep isn’t something I’ve tried much in the past. So I was interested to see if I’d notice an effect, either in my sleep tracker data or simply with personal observations.

I picked up a bottle of ‘Sleepeaze’ lavender pillow spray from Boots pharmacy and followed the instructions every night for a week. That basically meant spraying however much I wanted to above the bed and around the bedroom before getting into bed (a couple of sprays was enough!).

My sleep tracker data remained quite similar to the week before, with no noticeable changes to the quantity of sleep on the better nights. However, I felt that I slept quite well every night that week, which isn’t always the case for me.

Whether the lavender had anything to do with that is hard to say based on my rather un-scientific personal test. But I’m happy with that fact that I had a pretty good week’s sleep, whatever the reason(s) might have been.

What I can say for certain is that I liked the scent of the lavender in the bedroom. If nothing else, it’s nice to get into bed with a pleasant smell in the air; not that my bedroom smells bad (except when the dog spent too long in there), but the scent of lavender just somehow feels right for the bedroom.

And perhaps the act of spraying it helped me feel that I was doing something positive to help my sleep.

Your views

Have you used lavender oil or any other essential oil to help you sleep? Did it work for you? Feel free to share your experience in the comments below.