Yep, we’re talking about sniffing your way to dreamland. According to the poll, most of the 1,501 participants from Mexico, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada feel more relaxed before bed when their bedrooms smell the way they want. Which makes sense, says Carl W. Bazil, MD, the director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center and Sleep Center at ColumbiaDoctors in New York. “A pleasant scent helps with relaxation, which is of course essential for quality sleep,” he says. “How exactly this occurs is not known. It may be that once a particular pleasant scent is associated with bedtime, it becomes a more reliable cue to the brain that it’s time to relax and fall asleep.” But before you loot lavender candles at the nearest Bed, Bath and Beyond, know this: Scents, like many bedtime rituals, are very much individual, says Dr. Bazil. So lavender could help one person doze off—and not you. If that’s the case, Dr. Bazil suggests relying on memory. “A smell that is associated with a particularly relaxing time, like a vacation in Hawaii, may be helpful.” (Our 7 Natural Sleep Inducers can help, too.) No matter which scent you settle on, the trick is to take whiffs intermittently. “The sense of smell very rapidly extinguishes–if a scent is constant, you notice it less and less,” says Dr. Bazil. “Your brain will learn over time that these are signals for sleep, and allow you to slip into dreamland easier and easier!” More from Prevention: Dr. Taz’s Favorite Natural Sleep Aids
