Does an hour of floating actually equal six hours of sleep?
Whenever something new meets Pop Media headlines, there’s a tendency for whatever tasty nugget might be included in this new thing to be sensationalized to attract greater readership. This “clickbait” opportunity has not been missed even on float therapy and sensory deprivation tanks.
While the comparisons to a portal to “Upside Down” from Stranger Things is often no longer included in the lexicon, the quote that is continuously blown out of proportion is in regards to the restorative effects of floating and sleep. Depending on which news source you’re reading, you’ll often see it stated that an hour of floating is equivalent to anywhere from four to six hours of sleep.
The most recent news blast that has likely proliferated this claim again was when Josh McDaniels from the New England Patriots said that 45 minutes in the tank was equal to four hours of sleep - extrapolate this and I think that is why people are now pushing the claim that an hour of floating is equal to six hours of sleep.
Is this really the case?
Let’s break down the components of this claim and decipher the reality from what is exaggerated.
What We Know About Floating as it Relates to Relaxation
Floating is a powerful way to combat stress and anxiety and multiple clinical studies have validated this claim. The absence of any external stimuli often allows your brain to sort things out on its own and realize that everything we stress about on a day-to-day basis doesn’t have to be such a big issue.
Because the brain doesn’t have all five senses providing input during a float session, our brain wave frequencies are able to settle down into a deeper state of relaxation. This relaxed state is called theta brainwaves and is the same state that expert meditators reach and we all achieve during REM sleep and dreaming.
Figure 1. This chart from my Oura ring shows the different sleep stages that I was in throughout the night. You can see that most deep sleep comes in the earlier half of your nightly slumber and REM comes during the latter part.
It sounds then very much like floating is pretty much the same as sleeping, right?
REM sleep is only one component of our total nightly sleep cycle. It often comes in the later stages of sleep and is associated with creativity and memory consolidation. REM sleep also plays an important role in re-energizing your mind and body. Reaching a theta brainwave state while floating is, therefore, one of the reasons why people love floating for the boost in creativity and energy that they get.
Most of the later hours of sleep are dedicated to REM (see Figure 1).
Sleep is a fascinating component of our lives and has a multitude of aspects that are necessary for good health, REM being just one of them. Another very important part of sleep is the deep sleep stage which is when our bodies release a beneficial cascade of hormones to help repair and grow muscle, making it the most restorative sleep segment.
There is no evidence thus far that floating can induce a deep sleep state and the associated release of healing hormones (that is unless you sleep in a float tank).
This is where making claims like sleep replacing 6 hours of sleep can cross the line from benefit to simply being misleading because people who only get about 6 hours of sleep each night might think that they can get away with replacing that with an hour float. (6 hours of sleep is simply not enough, for more on this read the excellent book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker)
Perhaps an even bigger issue with people making claims like this is that it puts floating at risk of being converted from a trend into a fad and lumped into the likes of fidget spinners and pogs.