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I am an extremely light sleeper, and need advice
I just changed rooms, and my new neighbor makes noise. It's not much of a problem for other people, but I wake up at the slightest sound or the slightest change in lighting. Because of this, I am not able to sleep properly. I have tried earbuds and earplugs, but they hurt my ears. Can you suggest how I can become a heavy sleeper? Or how to sleep in this environment?
Fans. Lots of fans. The bigger the fan the louder it is. The louder it is the more it drowns out. It's much easier to tune out the constant drone of a fan than other less consistent sounds.
I would also suggest a sleeping mask. You can find pretty comfortable ones for cheap.
Huge +1 for a sleeping mask. I find that if I rouse, some noise is one thing, but the smallest amount of light guarantees the end of my sleep. It's over at that point. OP might be different, but it's cheap, a very small life adjustment, and worth trying imo.
Just ordered a sleeping mask. I keep fan on but my fan doesn't make any noise i should buy a table fan i guess
You can also look for a white noise app on your phone. Lots of them have different kinds of white noise as well as fans, running water, rainforest etc.
If you have an Android phone, you can just ask Google Assistant to play sleep sounds, and it will play them all night. A list of sounds available:
Bit of a potentially unusual suggestion...
But the Skyrim OST's final music track is a 45 minute long atmospheric. I love this track for sleeping at night- it kinda runs the gauntlet of relaxing noises.
Falling asleep with noise generally can help you sleep through the night. Basically your brain takes the noise going on around you and uses that as the "baseline", and anything much louder than that will signify a danger to your caveman brain and cause you to wake up. Doesn't necessarily have to be a fan. Podcast, TV show, music. I listen to stand up comedy most nights.
I'm worried that it's too easy to get addicted or reliant on this kind of stimulation to sleep. Many years ago I would fall asleep to old episodes of the Simpsons or Futurama. And then when I was in a situation where I didn't have my episodes it was really hard to sleep. Now I do the same most nights with a Youtube video playing with the screen off. It definitely helps but I'm worried about the same result.
I've worried about this myself, but on the other hand, I sleep much better the 99% of the time I have my phone on me.
I think it's best to not let a hypothetical keep you from sleeping well now.
I’ve gone through the same, and I go camping every year for about a week, so I’ve adapted what used to be a pedestal fan to make noise, now instead I use a Bluetooth speaker playing rain sounds that are directly from an app, no internet required. The only issue is battery power, but I always have a big battery backup for my phone anyway.
Also earplugs should help and be more comfortable than earbuds.
I tried them aswell they are not comfortable for me i tried foam one and silicon one
Foam earplugs should be changed once a week. Also, some brands are softer than others. I'd give foam earplugs another try before giving up on them. They've been a godsend to me, and I'm also a light sleeper.
Historically foam hurt my ears as well. I recently tried some specifically for slim ear canals and they were much better. First foam ones I could actually sleep with in my ears.
There's always an option to get them custom made. Shouldn't be too expensive, especially when the result is better sleep.
I've always been tempted to get the professional ones, but it's hard to find an audiologist to do them (and they're pretty expensive, so it's not much of an impulse purchase). Costco used to do them, but not anymore.
I have in the past used the Radians earplug kits. They're about $20 and you can make them at home pretty easily... They won't be perfect, and it's pretty easy to have them be kind of uneven (e.g., one earplug gets more material than the other)... But they can be very comfortable and much easier to sleep with than foam earplugs (which hurt my ears after a while at night). I'm still upset that I lost one of mine somehow. I should really make a new pair.
Have you tried the Loop ear plugs? They're pretty comfy for sleeping and I don't feel like I hear myself breathing as much as I do with the foam ones.
My wife swears by those Loop ear plugs for when she has noise sensitive migraines.
I've had trouble sleeping for about 6-8 months and listening to sleep podcasts has been a big help. I don't like earbuds either -- I wear a headband with embedded speakers, and after trying out several models have found the Sleepphones speakers to be the most comfortable. They have a bluetooth model and wired. Since I'm a cheapskate and already had a headband from previous purchases I bought a set of their wired replacement speakers and stuffed them inside. They do not really block out outside sound all that well, but if you play white noise that may be enough.
My mom got me a weighted sleeping mask a couple of years ago, and it's seriously been one of the best things I've owned. At this point it's like a teddy bear for my face. It's also two-sided: warm side and cool side.
As an alternative to fan, get a white noise app. Or even an app which plays the recording of a fan.
I see a lot of suggestions for white noise through an app, but OP, please try an actual high quality noise machine. Dohm is a great brand of white noise that actually pushes air through the machine to generate white noise. Cheap white noise machines just use a speaker, which results in a much lower quality sound experience that doesn’t muddle outside noise as effectively. I also agree with others about a sleeping mask, it can make a big difference in the quality of sleep for light sleepers.
My last suggestion may be controversial. If you consume caffeine, try quitting it entirely. Some people (myself included) seem to be affected by caffeine for longer periods of time. You’ll often hear people suggest stopping caffeine consumption 8-12 hours before bedtime. That rule of thumb doesn’t apply to me I’ve found, and any significant amount of caffeine (for me, even one cup of tea), disrupts my ability to fall and stay asleep. After quitting, I’ve found I generally fall asleep and more importantly can fall back to sleep after waking up in the night or early mornings. I encourage anyone with sleep issues to try quitting caffeine entirely just to see if it helps. It’s not advice you generally see anywhere, but has been a game changer for me!
On quitting caffeine:
I used to be a two-to-three cups of coffee a day kind of person, usually with my last one coming around 4 PM.
In attempting to diagnose some sleep issues, I cut caffeine altogether (after tapering down).
Initially I hated it and just really wanted coffee every day, but after some readjustment time I found that my body got used to the new rhythm. I would get tired at the right time, and, when I woke up, I didn’t need the caffeine to jumpstart me. I wake up at 5:45 AM for work. The idea that I could do that without coffee and be functional seemed impossible initially, but it genuinely did happen.
A few weeks after cutting caffeine, I idly drank a Diet Coke in the afternoon, not thinking about the fact that it too was caffeinated. When I tried to go to bed that night, I was unexpectedly awake. It was like my brain refused to shut itself down. I didn’t even think about the Coke I’d had until the next morning, when I was trying to figure out why on earth my mind was racing instead of settling down the night before. I later had a similar experience a few weeks later where I downed
a little too muchdefinitely too much dark chocolate after dinner one day.It really helped me to see that I was way more sensitive to caffeine than I realized. My body, when I was drinking it, had acclimated itself to a baseline where I was flooding it with caffeine daily. My baseline now is such that even a 3 PM soda or a few ounces of dark chocolate (both with way less caffeine than a coffee) have a noticeable effect. I’m at the point where pretty much the only caffeine I’ll do is green tea first thing in the morning, but that’s about it — anything more tends to throw off my rhythm.
Cutting caffeine didn’t solve all of my sleep issues, but it did help. I do miss coffee both as a drink and as a ritual, but also it felt freeing to not have to be “stuck” with it. I was always having to make sure I had my coffee at the right times otherwise I’d be left with a splitting headache. I kept some canned coffee around as emergency backup, in case my schedule was ever thrown off or I forgot my coffee at home or whatnot. If we traveled, I literally had to plan around making sure I got coffee when I needed it.
Not having to worry about living my life around coffee’s schedule or influence has been really nice.
Your description of your relationship to caffeine, your history with it, and the effect it has in even small quantities now that you’ve largely eliminated it could have been written by me. I actually still really miss it even after several months of not using it regularly. But there are so many benefits to not using it regularly that I am usually able to talk myself out of a craving. I’ve had a couple cups of oolong in the morning since quitting, but both times I had objectively lower quality sleeps according to my Fitbit which I use to track my sleep each night. Those two cups were fantastic after a long period of abstinence though. I felt sharp, had a positive impact to my mood, was more social and just generally felt great for the rest of the day. But then I paid the price at night. It really is such a fascinating drug that most people take for granted
Yeah, I have had a few coffees here and there since I quit, and, like you, I noticed the positive effects. One day I had a ton of tedious paperwork to get through at work, so I got a coffee in the morning as a way of preparing myself. When I got to work and tackled the paperwork, I was unstoppable. What I was dreading as a task of drudgery instead became my epic slam dunk as I was getting things done quickly and efficiently and sharply! I definitely get why I started drinking coffee in the first place! It felt good.
On the other hand, a few times I also either overdid it or the caffeine hit me differently. Instead of getting a positive lift, I was overactive, jittery, couldn’t sit still and when I tried it felt like I was going to crawl out of my own skin.
I too am this kind of sensitive to caffeine. I've found decaf tea to be low enough that I can enjoy it in the morning and still get to sleep at night.
Agreed, a nice sound machine is fairly cheap anyway and will be much much better then your phone from both a volume and sound quality perspective
The Dohm white noise machines are great. My daughter's bedroom is on the front of the house and we live on a fairly active street. We have two Dohm noise machines in her room and, aside from the occasional heavy thunderstorm or loud ass motorcycle going by in the middle of the night, it definitely helps.
Do you have blackout curtains? You can get really heavy ones that will also cut a little sound.
For earplugs, have you tried loop earplugs? That design is really comfortable and nice and doesn't fall out.
Lastly, do you meditate?
Thank you so much for this reply it's really helpful but I used earplug and now i have middle ear infection on both of my ears i washed my hands and used those earplugs just third time. I will try again after some time.
I am a student and I do not have TV in my room. I use the room only for sleeping, I stay in the university library from 8 am to 9 pm. Maybe i should sleep in library lol
Probably not what you want to hear, but it might be that you are spending too much time studying. Try to get some exercise, fresh air, relaxation time etc.
No , no, it's absolutely fine i do not really get anytime for exercise i just take a 3 km walk on the name of exercise
Do you get any time for physical activity or exercise? Sometimes you can be mentally exhausted, but your body still has an overabundance of physical energy and it can make for less deep sleep. A walk/jog or similar may help you sleep as much as managing the environment.
I do not actually i try to study 10 hours so i if we include break it take me 13.30 hours to study 10 hours and than 7 8 hours for sleep So i don't get any time I just take 3 km walk daily that's all i do on the name of exercise.
I used to sleep at the university sometimes when I was a student!
I used to love catching a nap in the library.
If you have Spotify these are white noise sounds that last for 8 hours:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2bAmrw0xKnOhOx4hqSL7vF?si=JO1jbSPjQi-D6VQsLF6kZQ
Also if your anxious about getting to sleep try Progressive Muscle Relaxation Meditation. The one I use is here: https://open.spotify.com/track/0fPSgP4Nn9jRJLeQnp6WWH?si=DAYN_H93TBaBctVAXznPBw
I make a small playlist where I begin with the Progressive Muscle Relaxation exercise, followed by the 8 hour white noise. It's a good system for me and one I have used for years now.
Blackout curtains can pretty much cutout any extraneous light. I got mine on Amazon. Also good for keeping the bedroom cool during the day if you have a lot of sun.
I use these when I travel (don't sleep well in unfamiliar surroundings and odd/random noises seem to be the main reason). I stream thunder or crashing waves as my white/pink noise of choice. You also might explore binaural beats.
https://www.sleepphones.com/sleepphones/bluetooth-sleep-headphones
+1 for sleep headphones. I bought myself a pair a few years ago because earbuds/headphones were too uncomfortable to lay down with. They aren't perfect, but are much more comfortable than the alternative.
I play 3d "rain on a tin roof" sounds. Also maybe take melatonin for a few weeks?
Also any 2-3 hour podcast. Basically fall asleep with some noise of your choosing and the noises from elsewhere won't impact you as much.
I like the Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington pod casts.... But use the ones where there have brought the volume of Ricky's laugh down a bit!
My SO is a light sleeper (as is our dog), we play a white noise playlist from Apple Music on a pair of Ikea Symfonisk speakers via AirPlay every night.
It's automated to a single tap on our phones with Shortcuts.
When there's a constant low steady noise, your caveman brain doesn't wake you up to every little bump in the night.
I am also a light sleeper, a couple things that have helped me are better earplugs and a white noise machine.
After trying dozens of earplugs that hurt my ears, I finally settled on Ohropax wax earplugs. Since they are wax, you roughly shape them to your ear and then they will soften and fill the crevices when you put them in.
As for the white noise machine, I didn’t get one of the electronic ones. I have one that has a physical fan inside and I can adjust the outside casing to adjust the noise it puts out. I highly recommend one of the physical ones over the electronic options.
If you are really desperate, you can buy some acoustic foam to put on your walls to cancel out some of the noise coming from outside your room.
I'm also a very light sleeper. My weighted blanket has helped a lot! I sleep through more nights with it. I take it with me when I travel. I was shocked how much better I slept on the first night.
Also the lowest dose of melatonin you can find. The lower the dose the better. Microdosing will help you sleep better and not wake up groggy. They've shown that the higher doses actually don't help you sleep better.
Seconding low dose melatonin.
After I learned that lower doses might work for me better, I started cutting my 5 mg melatonin tablets into quarters to help reduce the hangover effect in the morning. I was stuck doing that because 5 mg is how they're commonly sold and all I could find in the stores I regularly use (well, that and 10 mg "MAXIMUM STRENGTH" ones). Even then I was still getting some uncomfortable grogginess and the feeling that, even though I slept, I hadn't slept well.
The middling success I had with those lower doses inspired me to go ahead and find some 300 mcg tablets online (effectively quartering the dose again), and I've been very happy with them. They are less persuasive in getting me to sleep, which I guess is a downside, but pairing it with other falling-asleep activities/rituals generally works. The giant upside is that I feel way better the next day.
Good to know I can find lower doses online! The lowest I've found in stores is 3mg gummies. I always take them at least 9-10 hours before I need to be up so I'm not as groggy in the morning. I don't use it often, but when I do it's definitely planned out so that I have enough time to sleep through the whole dose.
Do you still get wild nightmares with the much lower dose? That's one of the reasons I don't take it too often. When I do, I also make sure to smoke a little extra weed along side it to make sure I don't dream. Those nightmares are something else!
Funny that you should ask this. I did take a melatonin last night and did have a bad-ish dream (not a nightmare, but it was distinctly uncomfortable?), so maybe there is a correlation? I haven't noticed it as a pattern up to this point though, so if there is a dreaming-related issue it hasn't been big enough to ping for me.
I'll caveat all of this by saying that I don't really dream that much or have nightmares in general, so maybe I'm an outlier.
Yea. I lot of people have very vivid, graphic bad nightmares when they take melatonin. Me included, unfortunately. There's usually someone with a knife that has killed everyone around me now chasing me down. Not fun!
I use the iphone built in white noise app and put it on speaker in bed next to me. That helps with most noise
I do use earplugs as well and it took me a while to find comfortable ones, I like Mack's. But if they hurt your ears obviously it's better to not force it
Echoing what a lot of people have said - worthwhile doing some trial and error with earplugs but i am also not able to tolerate earplugs at night. I strongly suggest a decent quality white noise machine. Something like the lectrofan (which is on sale on Amazon frequently). Try a few frequencies and volumes. I would actually place this by the area that is causing the noise that is affecting your sleep (e.g by the window if that’s where most of the noise is coming from). Some frequencies are better at blocking certain sounds than others. Also install black out curtains and if that is not possible a good quality eye mask. Good luck!
I personally can't stand white noise. I end up lying in bed thinking "it's too noisy". But if I turn down the volume to a non-distracting level, the white noise has no effect in masking other sounds.
What kind of earplugs have you been using? If you are looking for comfort, maybe the silicone style earplugs are better. They don't muffle sound as well, but they will not put pressure on your ears the way the foam ones do.
OP, you said you changed rooms and now you have a noisy neighbor. Is the noise coming from a side wall, above you, or below you? That might give us a better idea of how to help.
If they are above or on the side, maybe some acoustic wall or ceiling tiles, or rugs/blankets hung on the wall. If above you can also ask them.to use a rug on the floor.
I cant really have anything in my ears so i have used generated noise for years. Used to play it from a phone to a speaker, but it's a hazard because of the battery. (one actually swolled up) So i bought a stupidly cheap "computer speakers" that had USB stick-playback and are only powered by regular usb-charger. They have been running a 15 hour noise file in a loop in my bedroom for a year now. All day long, it even starts automatically if the power goes out.
What is still a problem is that when i sleep, my ears adapt to certain frequencies that get filtered out of the noise. I end up hearing really annoying distortions as a result if i wake up in the middle of the night. What once was like a sound of a windy trees "chuuuuuu" can end up sounding like "bu-bu-bu-bu-buuu-bu-bu-bu"
Sound/noise machines and earplugs. Sometimes when it's particularly important that I fall asleep and stay asleep, such as mid-day powernaps to make up for late nights, I will put my phone on airplane mode, open a noise-generating app, and sleep with my earbuds in.
As a light sleeper myself the biggest thing that helped me was definitely a white noise machine. I listen to rain sounds personally and now I can't sleep without them. You can just use your phone if you don't want to buy one right away. I know google assistant will play some and I'm sure the others do too.
There are sometimes softer foam earplugs or slim ones that might work better. Alternatively, wax earplugs.
I'm the same way and I live in a house full of siamese cats, and my mom smokes right outside the window my pillow is near at any time of the day/night. I have a Sony Bluetooth speaker (with good bass to drown out the lower pitched noises) and I play an app called White Noise Lite with a mix of brown and violet noise, with the brown noise at 100% and the violet at about 40% volume. I keep the violet noise down because I already have tinnitus.
I also have blackout curtains and I use tacks to pin the edges to the walls since the windows are on the wall where my head is. I can't do anything about the top though, where the rod forces a gap between the window and curtain. Maybe I could put a piece of cardboard up there?
I echo what lots of people have said about white noise, and I find another thing that makes a big difference for me is temperature. Do you have any control over the temperature of the room? If you can, try making it cooler at night. I sleep like absolute crap when I'm warm, and while I wouldn't say that I was a good sleeper if the room is cool, I'm at least better.
My personal fixes:
My go-to for white noise is the Vornado Zippi desk fan. The fabric blades give it a lower pitched hum, and I like the option of being able to use it when it's warm for a little breeze. I find that even though it's developed some rattles and off-sounds after a few years, they always go away after running it for maybe 20 minutes. I take it traveling too since it's (relatively) portable.
If you can improve the quality of your sleep, you may find that you're falling into a deeper sleep and having an easier time staying asleep - that's where the caffeine thread is coming from.
I'd like to bring up sleep hygiene in general. Improving sleep hygiene improves sleep quality even for folks who don't think they're having issues with sleep. Everyone can benefit from waking up in the morning feeling more rested and generally being more alert throughout the day, so any steps in that direction are only going to make life better.
I highly recommend the book Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams - I'm pretty sure I read it as an audiobook from the library. Don't let the doofy subtitle fool you, it's written by the director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and not about dream interpretation. It discusses sleep cycles and how those change over our lifetimes, how much sleep we need, the impact of sleep deprivation, and sleep hygiene (steps to take for better sleep quality). Here's the author's sleep hygiene list - I'm guessing you're in a hurry.
I see that a lot of apps, or white noise tracks have been mentioned, as well as running a fan. I use a Lectrofan white noise/fan machine. The reason I love this is it has everything built in, a boomy speaker, is easy to throw into a bag and take anywhere, runs on USB power, and most importantly, requires no internet. It's a cool little gadget, especially for light sleepers. It should drawn out noisy neighbors without trouble. There are a few models. I have the classic one (the one that looks retro).
I am also an extremely light sleeper. Everyone here has been talking about covering up the sounds and sights, but if you are like me then adding something into your environment is also going to be distracting.
So I recommend regularly working out, or increasing the workout you may already do. By doing this I have found I sleep deeper, even when I am still woken up regularly. I don't know the full science behind it, I have heard exercise helps produce natural melatonin and endorphins, and I put a link at the bottom here. But being sufficiently worn out from healthy exercise is the only thing that consistently works for me. Good luck.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/exercising-for-better-sleep