How Noise Can Improve Your Sleep

By: Kelly Murray, Certified Adult Sleep Coach

Let’s talk about all things sound and sleep!

First, we're going to examine how external noises can disrupt your sleep and lead to issues with both falling and staying asleep. And then we're going to explore how you can leverage sound in order to improve your sleep quality and duration. And then finally, we are going to talk about an awesome tool that you can use in order to not only block out disruptive noises, but also take advantage of how sound can improve your sleep overall.

Noise Disrupts Sleep

Anyone who has a partner who snores knows how loud noises can wake you up in the middle of the night. Raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by a snoring partner. I sure have! My husband, my dear husband, snores very loudly every single night and it's not a cute little snore - it is a loud rhinoceros-sounding snore.

These days, now that I have overcome my insomnia, it still wakes me up but it’s not as disruptive as it was. Now I can just nudge him in the ribs, and he rolls back over. However, when I was having sleep issues myself, it would keep me up for hours. I would wake up and then as soon as I thought that I was falling back to sleep, he would snore again, and I would wake back up and have to do my whole relaxation process in order to fall back to sleep.

Sometimes the anxiety of knowing that he could wake me up again through his snoring would lead to me not being able to fall back to sleep at all. Although it wasn't the main reason I was having sleep issues, it certainly did not help, and it definitely exacerbated the issues.

Thankfully my husband’s snoring no longer leads to severe sleep issues - it still disrupts my sleep. I estimate I wake up probably two to three times a night to give him the elbow This means I'm not getting the high quality REM sleep that I need to feel and be my best the next day - which is not good for a sleep coach, right?

That's why when the folks from Soundcore by Anker reached out to me to trial their sleep buds - the Sleep A10 - I jumped at the opportunity. Before I share more about these bad boys, let's examine a little more detail about what happens when an external noise, such as a snoring bed partner, disrupts your sleep?

How Noise Disrupts Sleep

As humans, we sleep in sleep cycles. We go from light to deep sleep every 90 minutes, and we typically go through about four phases of sleep each cycle and each phase has its own distinct purpose. So, if you are woken up mid cycle you start the cycle over once you fall back to sleep. If you're constantly being woken up in the middle of the night, that means that you're missing out on some of the phases of your sleep and you're not reaping all the benefits.

The research supports that disrupted sleep leads to quality-of-life issues. A 2017 literature review showed that bed partners of sleep apnea patients (heavy snorers) reported that the snoring had a negative impact on their mood, their sleep duration and quality, their quality of life, their energy, as well as their relationship with their partner.

And it goes without saying, it's not only a snoring partner that can wake you up in the middle of the night. But a noisy neighbor, a car alarm, animals, street noise. etc. There are many things in the middle of the night that can disrupt your sleep due to their sounds, which is why it's important to find a way to mask all those external noises.So that you can get a solid night's sleep

Noise Improves Sleep

One of the best ways I have found to black out all the noises is to fight fire with fire. Use noise to cancel noise.

One of the most popular ways to drown out noise is by using white noise. Now white noise is great for an office environment because it's high frequency, it sounds like a radio set to an unused station - that staticky sound. However, I find that it's too stimulating for sleep, and the research shows that brown or pink noise is preferred because it's lower frequency and has a calming, not stimulating effect.

Brown and pink noises are very similar to the noises that we find in nature, such as an ocean wave, a running river or a steady stream of wind. One study in 2012 found that pink noise helped to reduce brain wave complexity and improve sleep quality and quantity.

And while we're on the topic of nature sounds, research shows that listening to nature actually improves rest and relaxation. I don't know about you, but whenever it rains, I love to open up my windows and hear the raindrops because I always sleep like a queen when I do!

The research shows it's not just in my head. There was a randomized control study of patients on a noisy cardiac unit that showed that the patients who had nature sounds playing overnight had less wake ups and longer sleep duration.

Another way you can leverage sound to improve your sleep is by playing music. There was a study that showed that after three weeks of listening to music at bedtime the participants had improved deep sleep, quality sleep, and it took them less time to fall asleep.

Music has been shown to have a profound effect on both our mind and our body. It helps to lower our respiration rates, our heartbeats, our blood pressure, it calms our nervous system, promotes the release of sleep hormones such as oxytocin and serotonin, which is the precursor to melatonin, and it even helps to lower cortisol, the stress hormone. And as it goes without saying, all of this translates into better sleep!

How to Use Noise to Improve Your Sleep

You can use the power of sound to improve your sleep in real life.

A traditional way to use noise to combat noise is to use either a sound machine or a fan but ironically, what I have found is that this noise actually disrupts my husband's sleep.

A more high-tech solution would be to connect to a Bluetooth speaker. I like this option because it allows you to stream either a meditation, music, or noise through the speaker. But the problem with this again is it could disrupt your partner and also if you want to transition between music when you're falling asleep and noise once you're sleeping you would have to open up your phone and change to a different app.

And the problem with that is that you're going to be exposed to blue light, which is going to tell your body that it's daytime. So, your body's going to produce cortisol, the alert hormone, and then suppress melatonin, the sleepy hormone.

If you're looking for a solution that gives you the best of both worlds; allows you to stream either music, a podcast, or an audible book while you're falling asleep and then quickly transition to noise to keep you asleep, I recommend giving the Sleep A10 a try. The Sleep A10 are sleep earbuds.

They are lightweight, soft, made of silicone, and you can custom fit them because the ear tips have four different sizes. They also come with a little ear-wing that fits in your ear very snugly to help block out noise. The thing I love the most about a sleep bud solution is that I can listen to whatever I want as I am sleeping without disrupting my husband.

I've done a lot of research into sleep buds and the A10 is the smartest product on the market. The thing I love about them the most is that the app allows you to stream whatever you want as you're falling asleep, such as music, a podcast, or meditation, and then they detect when you're sleeping and they'll automatically transition to noise to help you stay asleep. You can also manually transition to noise by just double clicking the left earbud twice.

And that's not all!

They also detect when the volume around you has increased and they will automatically adjust the volume of the noise. In addition, the A10 tracks your sleep. It will track how much time you spend in light sleep, deep sleep, and your total sleep, which eliminates the need to wear another tracking device.

It also eliminates another device and alarm - you can set the time that you want to wake up in the app and even choose your alarm sound. And best of all is that the A10 is about $100 less expensive than the competitor, and the competitor doesn't even allow you to stream from an external app.

Try This for Better Sleep

I've been using the A10 for the past week and not only do I love being able to fall asleep listening to my favorite meditation, the noise has completely blocked out my husband's snoring. So whether you need to block out a snoring partner like I do, or you just want to listen to some music or noise to help improve your sleep, I highly recommend checking out the Sleep A10. It's affordable, functional, and comfortable.

You can use code WS24SLEEP before Nov 28, 2022 to save $45 on your own set of Soundcore Sleep A10.

If you decide to give it a try, please drop me a line at kelly@kellymurraysleep.com. I would love to hear if it helped improve your sleep as much as it did mine.

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This blog is a paid partnership between Kelly Murray Sleep Consulting and Soundcore by Anker. All opinions in this article are my own.