Rom-coms before going to sleep: not a good idea!

Worse than a horror movie!
Why you should never watch Rom-Coms fall asleep

© Impact Photography / Shutterstock

There’s nothing better than snuggling up in the duvet and watching a romantic comedy before falling asleep, right? Not correct! You can find out why you shouldn’t do that below.

You make yourself comfortable in bed, run a romantic comedy like “Bridget Jones”, then want to fall asleep peacefully and dream of Colin Firth alias Mark Darcy. Sounds like a good plan, actually. But as it turns out, so-called rom-coms are not particularly suitable as a method of falling asleep.

Rom-coms interfere with sleep

It’s no secret that our bodies get the best sleep if we don’t use any electronic devices about two hours before bed. But many people have a television in their bedroom and tend to watch a movie or series before falling asleep. A study by the US portal “Sleep Junkies” has now shown that watching romance films before bed is actually bad for our sleep – it is even worse than watching a horror film!

Who would have thought? This genre does the best

More than 200 people took part in the study. A sleep tracker was used to analyze how long it took them to fall asleep and how restless the test subjects were.

The result: the people who watched horror or thriller programs before going to bed slept about an hour longer on average than those who indulged in a puff. But creepy films or series are not only more conducive to a good and long sleep than rom-coms, they also depend on other genres.

Here is the average length of sleep per genre:

  • Thriller / horror: 7 hours 50 minutes
  • Action: 7 hours 30 minutes
  • Reality TV: 7 hours 17 minutes
  • Comedy: 6 hours 55 minutes
  • Romance: 6 hours 45 minutes

Horror movies actually bring the longest sleep. However, the people who watched a thriller took the longest to fall asleep with an average of 44 minutes. The fastest to fall asleep are those who have seen Trash TV – the Sandman came after just 15 minutes. Romance and action lovers, on the other hand, needed between 36 and 39 minutes to fall asleep.

Horror film instead of rom-com

For horror fans this is still great news, because they can apparently watch scary films before going to bed without hesitation. Romance enthusiasts are less fortunate, however: The rom-coms seem to get their hearts beating too fast and impair a good night’s sleep. All people for whom their night’s rest is particularly important should, of course, forego television entirely before going to bed. However, if you can’t hold back the remote control, you should probably bet on Fredy Krueger rather than Mark Darcy.

Sources used: sleepjunkie.com, tyla.com

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