About Sleep
Sleep Related Conditions
Sleep Disorders
Have you ever encountered a situation, that it is too quiet to fall asleep? Perfect silence can indeed keep some people from enjoying a good night’s sleep. Sometimes a little background noise might be helpful for your sleep, sleeping with white noise can be one of your choices before going to bed.
What Is White Noise?
Simply put, white noise is a combination of all the sound frequencies humans can hear, such as the sound whirring fan, radio, or television static.
Technically speaking, the sound is measured by “frequency” in hertz, which refers to how fast the waves vibrate per second. While “amplitude” refers to the size of the waves which is usually measured in decibels. The relationship between the frequency and amplitude of a sound wave is used to define different “colors” of noise.
White noise is the noise that contains equal amplitude per frequency. The actual sound of white noise is typically described as a hissing sound, similar to the sound of the letters “sh” in the word “hush.”
Here are some examples of white noise:
- whirring fan
- radio or television static
- hissing radiator
- humming air conditioner
It is interesting to find that white noise can help mask other distracting sounds. Imagine your neighbor is holding a party at night, and then you turn on a fan to drown out the voices from them. In this sense, the drowning-out fan is similar to white noise.
Why Do I Sleep Better With Noise?
You must hear lots about white noise can help sleep, but don’t know how it works, and what are the exact benefits of sleeping with white noise.
It is found that our sense of hearing still works when we sleep. A completely quiet room may cause the potential listener to stay alert, listening for any trace of sound.
But not all noises are good for sleep, such as loud noises from cars or heavy doors slamming. Rather than the background noise itself, we are easily awake from the sudden change in background noise at night. By creating a sound masking effect, white noise can help block such sudden changes in sound and let sleepers remain asleep.
Sleeping with white noise may have other benefits:
Use the sound as the signal
It is a good way to prepare a cup of coffee and listen to the white noise before going to bed, then the brain would know it’s time to take a rest. Try to integrate the smoothing sound into your schedule, you will gain a better sleep habit.
Train our brain to relax
Stay off the phone and listen to some white noise before bedtime, and it can help train your brain to calm down and away from stressful thoughts in your head.
Allow us to stay asleep
White noise can help us fall asleep from other distracting noises, try to integrate white noise into our bedtime rituals to get a better night’s sleep overall.
In conclusion, sleep is essential to our daily health and overall well-being. Lack of a good night’s rest has been linked to other health problems, such as less focus and impaired memory. Get the tips of sleeping with white noise, try the white noise machine or sleeping apps such as ShutEye®, and you will find that getting a good sleep is not that hard!
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