White noise may not be good for your sleep
People who have trouble falling asleep have tried every trick in the book to get some sleep. If you’re one of those people who needs white noise, it might not be good for you.
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May the best noise win.
In a world of cacophony, it may be too much to demand silence. But even in this, there are sounds, as Simon and Garfunkel warned us.
So what do you do? Counter sound with sound. Tune in a sound to capture a sound.
This is the principle behind “sound masking” or “sound cancelling”. Many of us also know it as “white noise”. But you may also have heard that there is “brown noise”, “pink noise”, “blue noise”, “violet noise” and “green noise”. We will talk about that later.
You’ve probably encountered a “white noise machine” before. If not at home, in your bedroom, then perhaps at your therapist’s.
This is the small table device in the waiting room that produces a gentle “hssssssssssssssssssss” that drowns out any nearby noise. That’s why you can keep reading your National Geographic without noticing that at two o’clock the patient in the office next door is screaming and saying he’s going to chop up his mother.
Special noise masking devices have been around since 1962. They were apparently invented by a traveling salesman whose wife could no longer sleep without the sound of the air conditioning in the motel. There are white noise machines with different functions and in different price ranges. Recently, apps have also become available that serve the same purpose.
Relaxing white noise
Many of these devices offer a selection of soothing sounds: gentle rain, waves breaking on the shore, waterfalls, babbling brooks, the screeching of summer insects in the meadow. Such sounds can help you fall asleep. They can also help you forget that you are actually in an apartment on the third floor of an industrial corridor next to a major air traffic hub.
“Whether you live in the city or next to a highway, the more noise you are exposed to, the more severe your insomnia will be,” said Dr. John Saito, spokesman for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a nonprofit organization based in Illinois.
“Biologically, we are not adapted to live in this environment,” Saito said. The use of masking sounds is a “biohack,” he says.
Those endlessly repeated waterfall and rain shower sound bites are not true white noise—in scientific terms, it is a “random signal with equal intensity at different frequencies” that translates to our ears as a steady noise.
“The analogy is, it’s like white light,” Saito said. “It has all the colors of the spectrum.”
Consistency is key. It’s not just the volume of street noises, but their randomness that makes them so unbearable. When will the garbage trucks’ engines start up again? Will someone else start screaming? It’s hard to sleep with this kind of tension.
White noise, like icing on a cake, smooths out the cracks and interruptions. It provides a consistent sound environment. No shocks, no surprises. Peace.
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“It’s very unhealthy to be woken up from certain sleep states,” Saito said. “It causes great stress to the nervous system.”
There is still much to learn, Saito said, about the circadian rhythms that regulate our sleep and wakefulness. But one speculation about white noise is that it could sync with our brainwave signals when we are resting. “If your brain is producing a certain signal and you have a tone that matches that signal, you are likely to be in a calm state when you receive that signal,” he said. Not unlike the meditator “Ohm.”
Sounds of the Rainbow
But what about “brown noise,” “pink noise,” “blue noise,” “purple noise,” and “green noise”? All different types of noise with different properties.
If – to use the analogy of white light – white noise consists of all the colors of the spectrum, then by removing one or more colors, other “timbres” can be created.
“Light is a spectrum, heat is a spectrum, sound is a spectrum,” he said. “You’re changing the spectrum of the sound. That’s how I would explain it.”
While “white noise” is a gentle, feathery noise, “pink noise” and “green noise” are more powerful, like the sound of a roaring waterfall. “Blue noise” is a gentle sound reminiscent of a steady rain shower, while “gray noise” can remind you of a distant surf. Everyone perceives them differently, depending on their taste and eardrums. Everyone has their own preferences. “Our experience colors our perception,” Saito said.
Example: Many newcomers to the city find the traffic noise horrific. They may not be able to sleep. They cannot think.
But for city dwellers coming to the countryside for the first time, the silence or the chirping of crickets can be unbearable. How can you turn a blind eye to all that noise? Or worse, no noise at all? The soundscape is very personal.
“If you grew up by the sea, the sound of the sea is calming,” he said. “If you almost drowned in the sea, the sound of the waves is probably unpleasant for you.”
