Researchers observed 25 healthy adults, ages 21 to 41, in a sleep laboratory during eight-hour sleep opportunities over seven consecutive nights.
Absurdly low n. Additionally, I've become very skeptical of anything coming out of sleep labs after my wife was sent to one (at a prestigious teaching hospital) by her doctor some years ago: the 'sleep opportunity' was lights out at 9pm for 8 hours, and the staff were wholly indifferent to the fact that she's a night owl and prefers to sleep after midnight. Additionally she reported that it was not particularly quiet or dark.
I am not a fan of noise machines but I have noticed that I sleep best on rainy nights, which has a similar average sound spectrum, and is about the same as the sound of your blood circulating near your eardrums. Testing pink noise along with aircraft noise (which is closer to red noise) is equivalent to just making the noise level higher with slightly more midrange energy. Some noise can be relaxing for light sleepers; too much is just annoying.
The thing that stood out more to me than the n being low is "the participants reported not previously using noise to help them sleep or having any sleep disorders." Sleeping with pink noise seems like something that you'd end up getting acclimated to.
My n=1 is that I often sleep with a fan on and live in NYC -- whenever I stay in a place where there is no noise I tend to have trouble sleeping, so I end up turning on some nature sounds on my phone from myNoise.
Yeah that seems silly. I was a quiet-room sleeper until I met my wife, who needs some kind of white noise to sleep. I eventually adapted and now sleep much better with noise than without (at least subjectively), but that change took a while, at least several months. I found it quite difficult to sleep with for a while.
The low n is not the only questionable thing about the study. What a big n gives you is diversity of samples and tighter confidence intervals, but it can not correct for methodological limitations. Specifically, they didn't invite any people with sleep issues or who are already sleeping under noise. Therefore the conclusion is a "duh" - if you don't require pink noise to sleep, then don't add it.
The alternative is higher n. The study makes a claim, it does not present the evidence necessary to back up that claim. Until someone does a larger study, no conclusion should be drawn.
I'm not inviting you to draw conclusions from my semi-random (but informed by years of professional thought about why people like different sounds) anecdote.
The way I’m understanding it is that it’s more that if there’s a real population of people like his wife, that is only 5 percent of the actual population or even higher, for example, it may not be caught by such a small sample size.
My options are "fairly loud, low rumbly, mostly full spectrum noise" or "continual, nonstop barking." Only one of these options makes sleep possible. :) I'd prefer quiet, but it's so rare to actually have it.
Sleep studies often have low numbers of participants because conducting tests in a controlled environment of a sleep lab is expensive and time consuming, as they have only so many beds.
I’ll match your anecdote. I slept with white noise in my former home which was in a noisier town and felt it improved my sleep. Now that we’ve moved to a nice historic neighborhood I find I sleep best with nothing on at all. The silence there is so wonderful. Maybe silence is the ultimate luxury.
Common sense and experience inform my theory of good sleep: Pitch black, stone quiet, with noise limited to pre-sleep audial approximations of the dream-like mental noise that precipitates sleep.
My ex-partner has tinnitus and saw a psychologist who specialised in tinnitus. The psychologist suggested she buy a machine that generates a sound slightly quieter than her tinnitus which retrains the brain not to hear the tinnitus. So she bought a machine that generated about 15 different sounds and settled on a pink-ish sound and played while she slept. It took a couple of years but it effectively "cured" her tinnitus. It drove me mad for a while but after a while I didn't notice it.
The machine had different sounds because the sound of tinnitus is different for different people: hers sounded like cicadas, a sound I quite like but she hates!
I have misophonia and used to live in a house where a coffee van would start a generator at 0530 so I used a fan to help drown out the sound. I could still hear the generator but I could sleep through. It fundamentally changed the quality of my life.
Misophonia, interesting, I hadn’t heard (snort!) of that before. There are certain sounds I will inappropriately respond to, I’ll I read up on misophonia, thanks.
Anyways, you might be interested in a recent episode of DOAC (Diary of a CEO):
Sleep Expert Dr. Michael Breus breaks down the 4 chronotypes to master your sleep, how to fix insomnia, the truth about sleep apnea, and why the 8-hour myth is wrong!
Dr. Michael Breus is a clinical psychologist and a Diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine. He has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, served as a WebMD sleep expert, and is also the bestselling author of books such as, ‘Sleep Drink Breathe’.
Apple Podcast link or conjure your own from preferred provider:
> Misophonia, interesting, I hadn’t heard (snort!) of that before. There are certain sounds I will inappropriately respond to, I’ll I read up on misophonia, thanks.
I use the Background Sounds feature (in Accessibility settings) on iOS with a Bluetooth speaker every night while I sleep. It's quite battery-friendly and has several sound options alongside dedicated volume control with which you can set background sound volume independently of the main volume. It's also possible to add a shortcut button to this feature in the Control Center (the screen that's shown when you pull down from the top of the screen).
This makes occasional outside/neighbour noises much less noticeable, although I do keep earplugs near my bed just in case (not great for my tinnitus, but still usually better than without them if they're needed).
I'm with you. The way I deal with insomnia is to pretend I'm sleeping in a noisy environment. For example an apartment under a elevator highway or a cot behind a bunch of refrigerators. Or even in a tent on a lively beach.
With some friends we usually go camping near a waterfall and we always try to camp a little further so we don't hear the noise. At least not too much. We always assumed it was related to the fact that you can't hear anything approaching, some kind of primal instinct
This reminds me of an old Wired interview with Danny Hillis when he developed a system called Babble that used unintelligible vocal bits as background sound to help concentration, too bad it never really went anywhere.
https://www.wired.com/2005/06/applied-minds-think-remarkably...
I would recommend reading the paper rather than the article, or at least the abstract:
> Compared to a noise-free control night, EN reduced N3 deep sleep (p < .0001) while PN reduced REM sleep (p < .001). Adding PN to EN worsened sleep structure, despite minor dose-dependent improvements of EN-induced sleep fragmentation and N3 sleep increases. Earplugs mitigated nearly all EN effects on sleep but started failing at the highest EN level (65 dBA). Morning cognition, cardiovascular measures, and hearing were not affected by nighttime noise, but subjective assessments of sleep, alertness and mood were significantly worse after EN and PN exposure.
I'm also addicted to the fan but not only for the noise I like feeling the wind in my face, I think that as it also helps lower your body temperature you sleep better
The study may well be flawed—small n, selection bias, lack of proper controls, sure. But can we please stop using personal anecdotes to dismiss scientific inquiry?
Arguments like 'well, it works for me,' or 'I took this med and recovered immediately,' or 'I saw X happen right after a vaccine' are not valid refutations. Science is frequently counter-intuitive and often contradicts our personal experience and gut instincts. That is precisely why we rely on the scientific method and statistical rigor—rather than individual perception—to establish evidence.
On the other hand, my life isn’t a double-blind randomised controlled study.
I can’t bifurcate n times and give half of the me’s one treatment and the other half of me’s no treatment, and I especially can’t do that without revealing to myself which group of me’s received the treatment, and which received no treatment or a placebo. Who even know motivates us.
Additionally, what works for some version of me, for example there was a me who was younger and fitter and more appealing to the ladies, may not work for the older version of me who is less young, relies on testosterone supplementation to not be a writhing crying mess on the floor, and hasn’t had a root in 18 months.
That’s why the practice of medicine has always been considered an art and a science.
There’s art in learning to apply the practice of medicine in an effective way.
Also, populations change over time. Older doctors will notice that decades ago every second person came in with problem x, but now the patients of a similar age and similar live experience now seem to be experiencing more y and less x.
The human condition, while at least somewhat consistent insofar as we’re still puzzled by some age old questions, is also a moving target.
This study is tiny and of negligible value. They didn't even try to pretend it's of real value, and instead just dropped the classic "our study clearly demonstrates that people should probably study this stuff". Conditioned norms are by far the most relevant condition for sleep for most people, and sleep studies of tiny durations with tiny sets are basically just noise makers (har har). Even worse, they seem to have specifically excluded people who already use noise machines, ensuring that their participants were conditioned for the silent norm.
Scientific method, statistical rigour...eh, this looks like a headline chasing study.
Absurdly low n. Additionally, I've become very skeptical of anything coming out of sleep labs after my wife was sent to one (at a prestigious teaching hospital) by her doctor some years ago: the 'sleep opportunity' was lights out at 9pm for 8 hours, and the staff were wholly indifferent to the fact that she's a night owl and prefers to sleep after midnight. Additionally she reported that it was not particularly quiet or dark.
I am not a fan of noise machines but I have noticed that I sleep best on rainy nights, which has a similar average sound spectrum, and is about the same as the sound of your blood circulating near your eardrums. Testing pink noise along with aircraft noise (which is closer to red noise) is equivalent to just making the noise level higher with slightly more midrange energy. Some noise can be relaxing for light sleepers; too much is just annoying.
My n=1 is that I often sleep with a fan on and live in NYC -- whenever I stay in a place where there is no noise I tend to have trouble sleeping, so I end up turning on some nature sounds on my phone from myNoise.
Please divulge the statistical calculus showing this is an absurdly low n. Please explain how to determine the appropriate sample size.
No, "number _seems_ small" is not adequate statistical reasoning.
not be of any particular quality.
Do your homework.
What does this mean for you?
My hypnagogia, or mental-noise that precipitates sleep as you put it, is entirely visual hallucinations.
I’m not aware of ever having been able to recall any auditory hallucinations.
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The machine had different sounds because the sound of tinnitus is different for different people: hers sounded like cicadas, a sound I quite like but she hates!
I have misophonia and used to live in a house where a coffee van would start a generator at 0530 so I used a fan to help drown out the sound. I could still hear the generator but I could sleep through. It fundamentally changed the quality of my life.
Anyways, you might be interested in a recent episode of DOAC (Diary of a CEO):
Sleep Expert Dr. Michael Breus breaks down the 4 chronotypes to master your sleep, how to fix insomnia, the truth about sleep apnea, and why the 8-hour myth is wrong!
Dr. Michael Breus is a clinical psychologist and a Diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine. He has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, served as a WebMD sleep expert, and is also the bestselling author of books such as, ‘Sleep Drink Breathe’.
Apple Podcast link or conjure your own from preferred provider:
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-diary-of-a-ceo-wit...
The misophonia isn't a bad place to start: https://www.reddit.com/r/misophonia/
I've watched a few episodes of DOAC so I'll watch that. I know my chronotype but that's about all so it'll be interesting so what they say!
This makes occasional outside/neighbour noises much less noticeable, although I do keep earplugs near my bed just in case (not great for my tinnitus, but still usually better than without them if they're needed).
Exploratory research uses small N at the start. This kind of research can have value even if it is not conclusive.
Imagine the expense (and dominance of Big Research) if every study needed 100,000 participants to run.
If you don’t want to read exploratory studies, ignore them when they hit the headline news.
Other criticisms of this study (e.g., participants didn’t previously sleep with noise) seem more on the mark. I’m not an uncritical fan.
Scientists, on the other hand, know that low N does not necessarily reduce the validity or the value of a study.
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I occasionally fall asleep to either a movie / TV episode on repeat in a media player on the PC in my bedroom, or a YouTube short which repeats.
The audio almost always gets integrated in to my dreams, and almost always in a highly entertaining and humours way.
Anyways, I feel I sleep better when there is background sound, even if it’s other people (quietly) partying in the house.
Don't know why but it works great.
> Compared to a noise-free control night, EN reduced N3 deep sleep (p < .0001) while PN reduced REM sleep (p < .001). Adding PN to EN worsened sleep structure, despite minor dose-dependent improvements of EN-induced sleep fragmentation and N3 sleep increases. Earplugs mitigated nearly all EN effects on sleep but started failing at the highest EN level (65 dBA). Morning cognition, cardiovascular measures, and hearing were not affected by nighttime noise, but subjective assessments of sleep, alertness and mood were significantly worse after EN and PN exposure.
Unfortunately too expensive and large to set this up in the bedroom to help me sleep nowadays.
Arguments like 'well, it works for me,' or 'I took this med and recovered immediately,' or 'I saw X happen right after a vaccine' are not valid refutations. Science is frequently counter-intuitive and often contradicts our personal experience and gut instincts. That is precisely why we rely on the scientific method and statistical rigor—rather than individual perception—to establish evidence.
I can’t bifurcate n times and give half of the me’s one treatment and the other half of me’s no treatment, and I especially can’t do that without revealing to myself which group of me’s received the treatment, and which received no treatment or a placebo. Who even know motivates us.
Additionally, what works for some version of me, for example there was a me who was younger and fitter and more appealing to the ladies, may not work for the older version of me who is less young, relies on testosterone supplementation to not be a writhing crying mess on the floor, and hasn’t had a root in 18 months.
That’s why the practice of medicine has always been considered an art and a science.
There’s art in learning to apply the practice of medicine in an effective way.
Also, populations change over time. Older doctors will notice that decades ago every second person came in with problem x, but now the patients of a similar age and similar live experience now seem to be experiencing more y and less x.
The human condition, while at least somewhat consistent insofar as we’re still puzzled by some age old questions, is also a moving target.
Scientific method, statistical rigour...eh, this looks like a headline chasing study.
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