Well, this is a new one.
According to TikTok — the home of every bizarrely good hack lately — the best sleep of your life is a mere bag of peas away.
So, what is this hack all about, and can a frozen bag of peas really have you sleeping like a baby? Let’s find out.
In a viral video, TikTok user Frankie Simmons explained how anxiety used to ruin her sleep.
“A couple of years ago, it was a very regular occurrence for me to wake up at 4 AM with anxiety, all the time,” TikTok user @heyfrankiesimmons, aka Frankie Simmons, explained in her nervous system toolkit series.
Learning about her own nervous system was the key to fixing all that.
“And all that changed the day that I learned about icing your vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is one of the longest nerves in your body and it controls a lot of your parasympathetic nervous system, aka the nervous system involved in calming you down.”
The vagus nerve is definitely the queen.
“Whenever we’re talking about nervous system regulation, this here is kind of the final boss. Because if mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy,” Frankie said. “And applying cold to our vagus nerve helps it release inflammation, it stimulates it, it just helps it do its job better.”
So, how do you do that?
Short of taking a cold shower or jumping in a cold lake — as Frankie joked — the easiest solution is in your freezer.
“If you wanna save yourself the discomfort, just put an ice pack on your chest.”
Just relax and let it do the work.
“Wrap [the ice pack] in a towel, put it right here, lie down for at least 15 minutes — longer if you need to — watch TikToks, do whatever you were going to do anyway. And it is a game changer.”
If you don’t have an ice pack, do what Frankie did when she discovered the hack.
“[…] I didn’t even have an ice pack at the time. I would just go to the freezer, get a pack of frozen peas, put it between my boobs — I’d be back out in no time.”
As someone with very bad anxiety, I think there’s some merit to this.
Any kind of stimulation to your vagus nerve helps reset your body. Cold is the best way to do that — it’s how I calm down after having a panic attack. Now, I’m certainly not a doctor. But from my personal experience, this definitely has some merit.
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However, I do have access to an expert — my mom!
She’s a chartered psychologist in Canada, and I knew she’d be the person to ask about the validity of this hack.
“[…] these are the TIPP skills I taught you. They are VERY effective,” she said.
TIPP — created by Marsha M. Linehan — stands for Temperature, Intense exercise, Paced breathing, Progressive muscle relaxation.
(This isn’t medical advice from either of us — just some education on the hack.)
Frankie thinks the hack could be a game changer, and I agree.
“I swear when I found this, an hour and a half of trying to calm myself down to go back to sleep when I woke up at 4AM turned into 15 minutes,” she said. “It changed my life, I want everybody to know about this magic.”
Go forth and get your frozen peas on!
