Does The TikTok Ice Pack Hack For Sleep Work?

Fellow insomniacs: the answer to our sleep deprivation has been sitting in the freezer all along. At least that’s what TikTokers like @heyfrankiesimmons, @empathary and @borcikjewelry are saying. Apparently, placing a simple ice pack on your chest might lull you to sleep in just 15 minutes.

Insomnia has ruled my waking life for the best part of my 20s. Whenever I’ve had a reasonably good night’s sleep – which happens about twice a week – I work better the next day, I eat more healthily, I’m more ambitious, I feel myself becoming kinder. The rest of the time, I experience the sort of aching anxiety that comes with a hangover (even when I haven’t had a nightcap), paired with feelings of being slow, distracted and unexcited. As well as the well documented, immediate consequences of insomnia, there are potential serious and long-term health problems, “including obesity, coronary heart disease and diabetes – and it shortens your life expectancy,” according to the NHS website. “What happens if I don’t sleep?” asked Kiss FM DJ Daisy Maskell in a recent BBC documentary on the rise of insomnia in Gen Z. “Almost every article tells you eventually that you’ll die from it.” And so the anxiety viciously spirals.