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There’s only one thing more harmful to your sleep than pink noise or plane noise: pink noise with plane noise, a new study finds. And if you want to have a restful sleep… use earplugs.
O pink noiseoften used to promote sleep, can reduce restful REM sleep and interfere with sleep recovery.
In contrast, the ear plugs proved to be significantly more effective in sleep protection against traffic noise, according to the conclusion of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania (U.Penn), in the USA, published on Monday in the magazine Sleep.
The study’s findings challenge the widespread use of ambient sound machines and applications marketed as sleep aids.
“REM sleep is important for memory consolidation, emotional regulation and brain development, so our findings suggest that playing pink noise and other types of broadband noise during sleep may be harmful”, he says Mathias Basnerprofessor at U.Penn and lead author of the study, at the university.
This stage of sleep is especially important for childrenwhose brains are still developing, and who spend much more time in REM sleep than adults, Basner points out.
Researchers observed 25 healthy adults, ages 21 to 41, in a sleep laboratory during eight-hour sleep periods over seven consecutive nights. The participants did not previously use noise to help them sleep or have any sleep disturbances.
The participants slept in different conditionsincluding exposure to airplane noise, pink noise, airplane noise with pink noise, and airplane noise with earplugs. Every morning, they completed tests and questionnaires to measure their sleep quality, alertness and other health effects.
When we sleep, we go through two distinct sleep periods several times: I’m deep and I’m REM.
Deep sleep is important for physical restoration, memory consolidation and elimination of toxins from the brain. REM sleep is important for airemotional regulationfor motor skills and brain development.
In this way, deep sleep and REM sleep complement each other and, together, ensure that we wake up refreshed in the morningã, ready for the next day.
What is pink noise?
Pink noise is a type of broadband noisea continuous sound distributed over a wide range of frequencies, which sounds uniform and similar to static. Broadband noise also includes the well-known white noise and other noise colors like brown noise and blue noise.
The different colors of noise differ in their energy content throughout the audible spectrumwhich determines whether they sound high or low. Sounds of nature like ocean or rain they are also broadband sounds, and many household appliances such as air conditioners and fans produce broadband sounds.
Revealing results
Exposure to airplane noisecompared to none, was associated with about least 23 minutes per night spent in “N3”, the deepest sleep phase.
Os earplugs have largely prevented this decrease in deep sleep. Already the isolated pink noise at 50 decibelscompared to the sound of “moderate rain”. was associated with a decrease of almost 19 minutes no I’m REM.
I know pink noise was combined with airplane noise, both deep sleep and REM sleep were significantly shorter compared to the noise-free control nights, and the time spent awake was now also 15 minutes longer, which had not been observed on the plane noise-only or pink noise-only nights.
Participants also reported that your sleep seemed lighterwoke up more often and their overall sleep quality was worse when exposed to airplane noise or pink noise, compared to noise-free nights — except when they used earplugs.
Habits of millions can lead to bad sleep
The results, according to the study authors, suggest not only that earplugs are probably effectivebut also that the general health effects of pink noise and other types of broadband noise “sleep aids” need to be studied in more depth.
Millions of people use broadband noise during sleep every night. White noise and ambient podcasts accounted for three million hours daily on the Spotify platform, and the top five videos on YouTube with the search “white noise” were viewed more than 700 million times.
So, get a good night’s sleep… if you don’t sleep listening to the 10 hours of pink noise we mentioned above. And by the way, before you sleep all night with your headphones on.
