"This Strange Blanket Helps Insomnia and Anxiety" has suddenly popped up in my facebook feed five times slo far today. It's a very short, misleading, and frankly terribly article about weighted blankets.
The most important thing to know about them is entirely overlooked:
they are medical devices.
Weighted blankets were developed specifically for children on the autistic spectrum and other sensory processing disorders. They are meant to help non-neurotpyical individuals manage meltdowns and episodes, relax, stop self-harmful behavior, and sleep more comfortably.
They are currently experiencing some popularity for other medical issues, and some neurotypical, able-bodied individuals are finding them soothing as well. (I'm going to use the word "healthy" in this article when referring to people who are not using them as a treatment for a medical issue.)
There is substantial anecdotal evidence that they help with some mental disorders such as severe anxiety disorder, panic attacks, emotional dysregulation, borderline personality disorder and other disassociative disorders.
They are also sometimes used for pain and nerve disorders such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and neuropathy (diabetic or otherwise), although there is a lot less data for this use.
Since this is a medical device, there are warnings.
They should never be used on children under 2, never be put over the head or neck, and the blanket weight should never exceed 1/10 your body weight plus 1 pound.
If you are "healthy" and just want a comforting, heavy blanket, you want to go with one about half the medical use weight, which for most adults is 9-14 lbs. That's about the weight of one standard housecat, spread across your entire body.
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Many people find anything heavier than for non-medical use distracting, disturbing, disruptive of sleep, or even painful. The original article's guideline of a 15-30 lb blanket for a "healthy" adult with insomnia is downright dangerous. (Most manufacturers don't even offer blankets over 25 lbs.)
With the encouragement of my therapist, I decided to invest in a weighted blanket about 6 months ago. She uses weighed lap and shoulder pads in her office, and finds them very helpful for clients with borderline and emotional dysregulation. We thought it might to help control my fibromyalgia pain as well. I weigh roughly 250 and bought
this 25lb blanket from SensoryGoods with the glass bead filling. (I have no connection to SensoryGoods except as their customer.)
It took me about 2 weeks to get used to sleeping with it. On nights I was having a lot of fibro pain, it felt wonderful, but on low-pain nights it felt oppressively heavy and constricting. Now, I love it and sleep much better with it every night.
It has reduced my fibro pain at night substantially. I am awakened by pain much less, have far fewer random nerve pain episodes, and have almost no 'restless leg'-like spasms when using it. The glass beads mold to my body very well and surround my joints and retain heat, so I wake with less stiffness and pain in my knees and back, too.
I have not noticed a substantial change in quality of sleep that isn't pain-related, but I do fall asleep much faster under the blanket, which is a nice change from years of long-term wakefulness when trying to sleep.
It has also been a very useful tool for my borderline and panic attacks. Wrapping up in the weighted blanket has seriously reduced the severity of my disassociative episodes and panic attacks. If I can get to it in time, I rarely fully disassociate or hyperventilate, and am able to calm down and normalize without having a full blown "episode" without the need to take any of my emergency medications.
They are a great tool for helping manage a certain subset of medical issues. They are NOT for everybody. If you're considering one to help your sleep, try the simple route first: pile 3-4 heavy blankets or coats or whatever on you when you take a nap or go to sleep. Does the pressure feel comforting, or constricting? Is it soothing or unsettling? If you don't like the feeling of that weight on you, you likely won't benefit from a weighted blanket. They don't magically fix all insomnia problems, nor cure lower-grade forms of anxiety that don't have panic attacks involved.
If you find you do like the extra weight, some vendors do make standard-sized non-medical weight versions:
SensoryGoods has 9-14 lb blankets for adult 'casual' use. These blankets are NOT cheap -- most of the online vendors are small companies making these to-order on demand. Make sure this is an investment you think will help you before running out and buying one . A 25lb blanket runs about $200 on average. You can DIY one, and there are plenty of instructions online.
This is one of the best.
