Weighted Blankets

Sliced Bread

BBC

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 634 Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Do weighted blankets reduce stress and help you sleep better?

They?ve gone from a middle-aisle fad to being a regular fixture in supermarkets and online stores. Weighted blankets can cost upto ?200 and promise to give you a deeper, more restful sleep. But do they?

Listener Theresa wanted to know about the science behind them. What is it about the ?deep touch? or ?deep pressure? stimulation that the manufacturers claim helps us to sleep? They?re also often marketed as offering help with anxiety and autism. Listener Claire runs a support group for children with autism and is keen to know more, so I speak to the lead scientist of a big study into that. And listener Pauline wonders whether there are any health risks associated with weighted blankets?

Once again this series we?re testing and investigating your suggested wonder-products, so if you?ve seen an ad, trend or fad, and wonder if there?s any evidence to back up a claim, drop us an email to [email protected] or you can send us a voice note to our WhatsApp number: 07543 306807.

Presenter: Greg Foot Producer: Simon Hoban

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, podcast fan.
0:03.0	Consider this your invite to the UK's biggest podcasting party.
0:06.7	We're heading to Sheffield from the 4th to the 6th of July
0:09.0	for the BBC Sounds Fringe at the Crossed Wires Festival.
0:12.8	We'll be joined by some of the biggest names in podcasting,
0:15.3	including Sarah Cox, Charlie Hedges, Russell Kane,
0:18.4	and some bloke called Greg James doing his Radio 4 show called Rewinder.
0:23.2	You can watch live shows of your favourite podcasts, and the best part is free.
0:28.0	To book your free tickets, go to crossedwires. Live, forward slash fringe.
0:34.4	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. Hello, I'm Greg Foote, and, Radio, podcasts.
0:44.3	Hello, I'm Greg Foote and welcome to the show that investigates the ad-hyped wonder products promising to make us happier, healthier and greener.
0:47.9	Are they the best things since sliced bread or marketing BS?
0:51.9	This week's suggestion comes in from Theresa Jackson in Manchester.
0:58.6	Hello Greg. Everard claims that weighted blankets help everything from reducing stress,
1:03.7	relieving anxiety and a cure for insomnia. As someone who doesn't sleep deeply, I wonder if they
1:08.9	work. And what's the science behind this?
1:11.5	Also, the weights very widely as do the price points? Do these factors make a difference to the quality
1:16.7	of sleep? And wouldn't a heavy duvet offer the same effect? Thanks, Teresa. If, like her, you have
1:23.0	seen a wonder product promising you the world, please do send it over. You can email us on
1:28.4	sliced.bred at BBC.co.com. Or drop us a voice note on WhatsApp to 07-543 306807. Someone else who did
1:37.5	just that on this topic is Claire Cross in Surrey. I run a support group for parents of autistic children called Waking Up to Autism.
1:46.8	And something that we talk about quite a lot is weighted blankets.
	...

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