FYI, there's been tons of research of the effects of noise on sleep from different sources. There have been studies ranging from in-lab experiments, to in-home experiments with artificial and natural sources. If you're interested, some resources:
Acoustical Society of America Lay Language Papers: https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/ (search for "sleep" -- the ASA has a full library of more detailed research but the documents cost money unless you're an ASA member)
A lot of the stuff that posters are asking for have in fact been done, it just takes some digging through the research sites to find them. There's a lot of variation in the data, the hypothesis is that sleep sensitivity varies a lot based on various physical factors (age being a big one).
Interestingly, there's been some suggestion that hearing loss is not inevitable with age, but is mostly just the accumulation of noise-related hearing loss in a loud industrial society.
I think partly the issue is that how we measure noise doesn't match how noise causes injury. Your cochlea acts as a spiral resonant tube, essentially a "physical FFT," concentrating energy at a particular frequency onto a particular location in the spiral. Too much (local!) energy damages the hair cells, causing conductive hearing loss.
But because we calculate A-weighted decibels by summing all frequencies and then checking if we're above the injury threshold (vs checking whether we exceed the injury threshold at any frequency), using A-weighted decibels can't accurately determine damaging noise levels. If all the energy is concentrated at Middle A it will cause more damage than spreading the energy out across the spectrum, even if the A-weighted decibels come out equal.
It's a somewhat subtle, wrong order-of-operations problem. There's also a separate problem that A-weighting is designed to normalize for perception at various frequencies, not hearing damage.
I've tried searching the literature to find out whether this is either 1)wrong, or 2)generally known within the fields of audiology and occupational hygiene, but so far I've come up empty.
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I recall an HN poster long ago saying how they wore earplugs daily to achieve "super hearing." It occurs to me that all they were doing was actually protecting their ears from damage. :-|
I've tried searching the literature to find out whether this is either 1)wrong, or 2)generally known within the fields of audiology and occupational hygiene, but so far I've come up empty.
FWIW, I've also heard the same, but don't remember where off the top of my head. It's at least potentially true, but the conventional wisdom among acousticians/noise control engineering is that age-related hearing loss is mostly to increasing age rather than external factors.
Oh, I meant about the wrong order-of-operations problem with decibels, which I have never seen anyone talk about. If you've heard of it please let me know.
The links discuss the evidence that hearing loss isn't inevitable with age, including examples of pre-industrial societies with quiet environments that when tested showed no hearing degradation with age.
The controversy seems to be mostly about how much of that effect was caused by good diet vs lack of exposure to loud sounds. I tend to think both are needed to be fully protective, eg to take an extreme example alcohol is known to cause damage to hearing cells even without exposure to loud sounds.
I expect, with apologies to Tolstoy, "All dysfunctional hearing is different, whereas all healthy hearing is the same."
Any advice on how to eliminate noisy neighbours that would randomly drop their shit at random intervals in the middle of night and let their child to stomp around every late evening?
I used to live in a wooden construction apartment, with neighbors above me. They themselves stomped a lot, both late at night and early in the morning, somehow.
Then they had a kid, which grew up and of course would run around the house at any hour. I was getting terrible sleep and it was driving me crazy.
All I could really do was move, and I made sure the next building was reinforced concrete, and that I would be on the top floor. The unit also ended up being on one end so only one wall shared with a neighbor.
It was instant relief and absolutely worth the move. It sucks though because obviously not everyone can live on the top floor of a building. If you're a heavy sleeper then I guess this is less of a problem, so I hope we have enough heavy sleepers in society so there's less competition for top floors. Probably wishful thinking though because the top floor is desired for other reasons unrelated to sleep.
Another thing to avoid are hardwood floors. I live in a concrete high rise but that wasn't enough to deal with a neighbor upstairs who would stomp around in shoes on the — admittedly very nice looking — white oak floor. It's basically a giant drum. Even vinyl is quieter.
That would be my no 1 go-to, if I didn't have to remain alert for my 3 year old sleeping next door (he can seep through the noisy neighbors though!)... (btw our neighbours are underneath and they cook at night, and talk very loudly)
Ear plugs should reduce intensity of sounds across the board. Yes, they’re less effective against low frequency noise, but reducing the intensity any amount goes a long way – the logarithmic scale is real!
I also personally find high frequency noise to be more disruptive: a car speeding by making wind noise is a lot worse than a large truck rumbling by slowly. Lower frequency is lower energy, after all
You know, I work in hospitals all day and people are always stomping around and moving heavy equipment. But you never hear anything coming through the ceiling.
Contact your state representative and ask them to do something about the building codes. It's a completely voluntary problem. American buildings are noisy because we decided that was okay.
You assume I'm in US, while I'm not. Not even EU. I know building owner personally and the only factual way is to evict those people. The only problem is that building owner is leasing them an apartment, and you can't evict people basing on household noises, even if they are driving me insane.
>Contact your state representative and ask them to do something about the building codes. It's a completely voluntary problem. American buildings are noisy because we decided that was okay.
Congratulations on finding an equally terrible and bad for everybody apartment-living analog to the sort of suburbanite Karen opinion that underpins meddling HOAs and busybody municipal codes.
If you want a quieter apartment pony up to live in a nicer one. Don't force the rest of society to shoulder the expense.
You should probably read The Market for Lemons. It's incredibly difficult to predict from the buyer's perspective how noisy an apartment will be. This is [one reason] why we have regulations.
I've also been doing small improvements to my sleep over the years and share some of your recommendations! What's worked best for me have been:
1. Good mattress and pillow (this is a 101 kind of thing).
2. Having the right temperature (same as above).
3. White noise. I also use a white noise machine and the White Noise app on iOS (which I bought for like $1 years ago and still use it). Ironically, I don't use white noise but brown noise, which is slightly more soothing to me.
4. Air purifier, not necessarily for the white noise it produces because it's pretty silent, but because that way I guarantee that I get at least 8 hours of purified air a day.
5. Black out curtains.
6. Eye masks. I actually wear two at once -- the first one to block any lights, the second one to press against my eyelashes, which I find it better for sleeping.
7. Magnesium Glycinate. I've tried different supplements, different forms of magnesium, and even different brands, and the one that I currently use has worked wonders for me. Made me go from being a light sleeper to a medium-heavy sleeper.
Haven't tried earplugs, but I don't really feel the need to. Another thing I tried (but never noticed a real difference) was using a small piece of tape on my lips to avoid opening my mouth.
> Ironically, I don't use white noise but brown noise, which is slightly more soothing to me
In case you or others didn't know, iOS has a built in noise generator with different presets under the accessibility options. Sometimes I use it with AirPods and active noise cancellation and it pretty much guarantees I can get a solid block of sleep, at least as long as the batteries last in one go.
I may suggest custom ear buds. Best $200 you'll spend. The original method is a wax form, but now there is a 3D scanning tool to map the shape of your ear.
Same thing - I've been adjusting my sleep since first Sleep Cycle came for iPhone. I started with a "smart" alarm and learned alarms are harmful. I didn't need an alarm, I just needed 7-8h of sleep. I was going to bed 1-2AM.
I'm doing all of the above with the following differences:
- I use AirPods pro. They are not that comfortable, but leaving a Audible low in background helps falling asleep and also getting back to sleep rather than picking random problems to solve and eventually waking up. It was "life-saver" when I started my first company before learning to manage stress.
What does AutoSleep offer above and beyond Apple’s Health app?
I have (and recommend) a white noise machine at home, but when I travel, I use the awesome MyNoise app, which lets you EQ the noise precisely so you can target the specific annoyance in your environment.
> What does AutoSleep offer above and beyond Apple’s Health app?
In my experience. After initial setup, it is way more accurate.
Apple commonly says I get more hours of sleep than I know I do. Apple counts just being relaxed as sleeping. Whereas I can tune AutoSleep to correctly identify the difference between me sleep and just being super relaxed. Thus I get a much more accurate image of what is working
Also the apple sleep graph is actually terrible. Almost impossible to understand when wake up are occurring.
I will definitely check it out then as I am frustrated by the same problem where Apple shows me as asleep when I am meditating myself back to sleep. It even shows me as sleeping when I have pushed the crown to see the time!
Would like to second ear plugs, it took some testing to find the right softness/size because I have very small ear canals, but these slim-fit earplugs have been life-changing for my sleep: https://a.co/d/38Kftbm
The earplugs don't completely cut out environmental noise, but they dampen it enough that I don't find myself being awakened by any bumps in the night.
And snipping down the tail ends of the earplugs with scissors helps reduce pressure if you're a side sleeper.
I can't stand earplugs, and think of ear buds as counter-productive. I've used (silken) eye masks, but have no use for them anymore, because successfully blacked out everything.
Don't know what to make of white-noise, do purring cats count? Or really relaxed snuggling with sexy gals after having fucked each others brains out? Or both?
I have a street in front of my bedroom and I'm wondering how well ANC earbuds work in that case. Will it be completely silent or will there still be some kind of whoosh-sound?
A large quantity of disposable earplugs is so cheap that I'd recommend you try that before investing time and money into ANC earbuds.
My spouse snores loudly, and a $15 container of 50 pairs has lasted more than 2 years, and saved our ability to co-sleep (I was only a couple nights away from moving to our guest room). We're also on a street with a very permissive speed limit, and we're under the approach path of the nearby airport, and it's never a problem.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0051U7W32 I got these, $15 for 50 pairs; the GP comment is $40 for 200 pairs which is a better value but more investment if you wind up dissatisfied
I don't know how to state this well but I find the fact that nearly all new apartment buildings in California are only allowed to be built on busy streets very frustrating. I'm guessing it's part nimby-ism and part zoning but every time I see a new apartment complex it's next to the busiest streets in the city (LA, SF). It's like many things, if you want health you must be rich. If you can't afford a house then F.U. You get a loud apartment with constant traffic noise.
I *almost* feel like it should be illegal to build them next to the freeway like
I don't actually think I think they should be illegal but dang it, I wish there were more options for new apartments. In LA there are lots of older apartment buildings in quiet residential neighborhoods built 50+ years ago.
I can see some argument about it, increasing traffic in areas that aren't equipped for it if the building is large enough. But it might just be market forces, too: in larger cities, it's often more desirable to be near a major artery. Earplugs (if the noise bothers you) vs a longer commute.
It is quite literally illegal to build anything but detached single family homes on 95.8 percent of the total residential land area in California / 75% of the residential land area in most major American cities.
That's not a problem with the location. That's a problem with building materials. I've lives on the busiest street in town, with well insulated walls and windows that block out street noise. And I've lived in poorly -constructed suburban houses that admit noise from across the neighborhood.
I disagree. The location is definitely a factor. If you live within 300 feet (about 100 meters) of a multi-lane highway, then depending on the wind patterns, you are definitely getting more exposure to pollutants that come from cars, trucks, or their brakes and tires. But no one in California is ready to talk about addressing this because it would require radically changing the status quo.
Check out the location of these condos in downtown Toronto built alongside the Gardiner Expressway, a very busy 90km/h (~55mph) highway: https://maps.app.goo.gl/TGLCBJGbrSEkAm7W6
Years ago I lived near a busy four-lane road with what seemed like a reasonable 60km/h speed limit. However, when it rained, the noise from the car tires on the wet road made it difficult to hear music from my radio. It was very unpleasant to leave the balcony doors open, as the constant din starts to work its way into your brain and make it very difficult to focus.
To a point. The problem is that the kind of people who are always screeching about traffic speeds are never satisfied and below a certain threshold the only way to go get slower is 4-way stops. And once those go in you get to listen to every motorcycle and delivery truck accelerate after the stop.
Say what you will about the suburbs but the grass and landscaping on each and every property is like noise cancelling foam being applied compared to the hardscaping downtown.
I was looking for an apartment on the SF Peninsula a couple years back. Nearly all apartment buildings constructed in recent years are right next to the freeway or right next to the CalTrain train tracks. Lots of air and noise pollution, and it feels like borderline hostility towards renters. Lived there for a short while and ultimately moved out of the Bay Area because of the poor options for renters in that area (although it gets better the further south you go) and of course the sky-high housing prices.
1) I’d like to see additional measures beyond dB. A 50dB consistent white noise does not bother me (and may even enhance my sleep) but an intermittent off/on sound of the same magnitude has a very different effect
2) what is the accuracy of the consumer metrics compared to medical benchmarks? In other words, how reliable are the sleep measures of consumer devices? Anecdotally, I’ve noticed my watch thinks I’m sleeping sometimes when I watch a movie, and I’ve heard MDs say the metrics aren’t accurate enough to make strong conclusions.
#1 is a great idea for follow-up -- looking at variance, 90th percentile vs median, and so on. There's probably some very salient measure of sleep-affecting noise that we can derive from the data.
On the accuracy of sleep metrics, when Apple Watch makes an error, it tends to misclassify deep or REM sleep as core (light) sleep, or waking as light sleep. It's relatively rare to misclassify deep or REM sleep as awake, or deep as REM (and vice versa). That's partly why we focus on those specific sleep metrics. You can see a full confusion matrix here: https://www.empirical.health/metrics/deep-sleep-percent#accu...
The confusion matrix linked above compares the Apple Watch to polysomnography equipment (which is the medical device used in a sleep lab). It doesn't _quite_ answer your question, since we're assuming the polysomnography equipment is ground truth, but it at least gives an idea of the discordance between a consumer device and a medical device.
There is a field dedicated to this called as psychoacoustics.
Sound pressure level (SPL) alone won’t work for this experiment like you said.
There are other metrics like steady state and transient noise, masking from different frequencies having different effects on humans.
It is definitely doable but far more complicated than the tweets seem to make it sound.
yes, that would be nice to have. but surely the data we have already would suggest for the benefit of our entire society, especially children (with the link between good sleep and mental development), we should incentivise thicker windows, better sills and other quick wins now
Nobody claimed we need 100% precision (or, more to the point, 100% certainty). But I would argue the level of our convictions should be proportional to the risk and level of certainty.
To the point being made, for most Americans the cost of updating your building envelope and fenestration is relatively high. Yet if we look at the accuracy of the data (compared to the medical device standard), it’s moderate accuracy. So we’re taking a high risk for something that we’re only moderately confident will work. That’s not a good tradeoff. There may be interventions that are lower risk that make for a more balanced approach.
“Move fast and break things” as a general philosophy is a risk-blind approach.
Yes, it’s about both effect size and uncertainty. That’s science. But your original post also brought policy into play. Unless you actually know that uncertainty, effect size, and those costs (including opportunity costs), you’re just making stuff up because “it just makes sense so it must be true.” That’s neither good science, nor good policy.
Advocating for big policy changes (like changing building codes) without understanding those aspects is like jumping into a pool headfirst before knowing the depth.
Moving fast and breaking things has a place. It’s just an error to think it applies to everything. There’s a reason why it’s usually relegated to relatively low-risk applications. I doubt you’d advocate an avionics engineer to take the same attitude.
It’s natural consequence of risk-blind policy making.
The idea that we can move fast and not break things without understanding the systemic risk is naive. I’m fine with moving fast if we understand the risk and the risk is borne by the appropriate parties. Your previous comments are a little too hand-wavy to indicate a nuanced understanding of the risk.
A lot of folks are talking about the “consistency” of a sound (constant white noise vs random sounds) and its volume, but I feel like the nature of the sound matters a lot more.
I’ll respond much differently to my bedroom door opening or a voice speaking than I do a bus outside.
It reminds me of the anecdote where human researchers rang bells near bears (human sounds) and the bears didn’t care, but if they broke a large bundle of branches (bear sounds), the bears went berserk.
I feel like our subconscious is a lot more involved here than we give it credit for.
This is especially true for sleep since we can be pretty good at incorporating external sounds into our dreams. It's been shown in controlled experiments. Seems likely that certain noises are generically easier to integrate into dreams than other noises, which could just cause you to wake up or have your sleep otherwise impaired.
The last time I lived in a flat the guy downstairs got up at 6am and used an iPhone. I know that because I could hear his alarm through the floor. Couldn't have been anywhere near 60dB in my room, but it would wake me up every damn time. Oddly, even today I am absurdly sensitive to that awful Apple alarm sound.
Same! I will jump out of my seat if I hear it loud, sleeping or not. If it goes off anywhere on a bus or a plane, I hear it at very low volume. I'm glad they've (since) changed the defaults to less jarring sounds.
why don't more hotels seem to understand this? so often I find that even nice hotels have very minimal background noise but poor soundproofing of the doors. so hallway noise disrupts sleep so much
When hotels buy doors, they optimize for things like cost, fireproofing, and weight (so guests and housecleaning can open them easily). Noise cancelling is a nice-to-have, but if you're buying and maintaining ~100 room doors (USA average per hotel), then you have to cut costs somewhere. On top of that, hotel hallway environments tend to be noisy in the first place. We're talking long, narrow hallways with hard walls, plus constant streams of holidaymakers who aren't exactly tiptoeing around.
I wake up _super_ easy at many parts of the night, to all kinds of minor sounds. But when I lived directly behind a train, I not only don't recall it waking me up, I distinctly remember that, after getting used to it, it had a kind of calming effect on me. Really interesting. But I wonder if it was still disrupting my sleep and to what degree. I'd mainly like to know in case we have future housing options next to a train because, outside of being near horn / turns, I wouldn't normally worry much about it.
Some days I joke that there should be a set of Nobel prizes for making machines quieter. Categories could include: air-conditioning units and mini-fridges, construction and landscaping equipment, old university buildings, pump-housings, etc. The quality of life of many would be improved if we had quieter machines. It boggles my mind that a) in many hotel rooms one can hear a good deal of machine noise and neighbors' televisions, and b) that some sort of noise score (as calculated from DB meter measurements) isn't more widely available for things like apartment rentals, conference room bookings, etc.
what about a noise tax? my city has some electric buses and some ancient buses - the difference obviously is absolutely huge, but right now the financial incentives aren't there to upgrade the whole fleet
Noise from construction machines is actually a feature. They all have added backup beepers at this point as required per OSHA guidelines. Audible for well over a mile in normal conditions
Tesco delivery trucks have them here in Ireland; it's pretty good stuff. Still quite loud/noticeable when you're up close, while at the same time not being completely obnoxious to everyone in a kilometre radius.
They have to be loud enough to be heard through hearing protection. The amplitude is a feature.
It's a "solved problem" in the sense that nuclear energy is a solved problem. There's no mandate to actually see widespread roll out of anything that may be a better solution.
There's a construction site near me at present. There is always 1 machine in reverse, at all times. The utility of having a backup beeper or any noise making device on that site is thus zero. It is the single largest source of noise pollution, larger than the roadway
>The utility of having a backup beeper or any noise making device on that site is thus zero.
This strikes me as an odd take, maybe from someone who has never worked on a construction site.
Our auditory sense is more than just a binary “present/not present” detection. We can sense distance and direction. Just because there is a backup beeper somewhere on site does not mean there is no value to any other auditory signal.
Think about when you’re in a congested city. There’s probably a lot of ambient car noise, including horns, in the background. That doesn’t mean you’re unable to react to a honking car in your immediate vicinity.
You just believe you can sense the direction of loud noises in urban environments. Our nervous system has no "404 not found" for positional awareness. Even after severe head trauma, you have a sense of position for everything. It's so wrong as to be useless, but you have it.
Ask anyone who's been at a shooting in a city. Everyone gives a different answer for where the shooter was at. It's such a severe issue the US Army has microphone arrays they equip urban combat vehicles with. Even with bullets actually bouncing off the armor the troops cannot accurately locate the direction of the shooter(s).
As the other poster mentioned, the characteristics of sound matter. That’s why the report of a firearm is a bad example.
But there are more commonplace examples. Older phone ringtones are often hard for people to locate, but nearly everybody can pinpoint the sound of a dropped coin. Sound perception is more complex than just perception of pressure levels. To the point above, you wouldn’t confuse a car honking in front of you with one behind you even in the presence of ambiguous ambient noise.
> They have to be loud enough to be heard through hearing protection.
It's kind of a nit-pick, but this is not really true.
Very approximately, you will perceive a sound if it is above your threshold of hearing, and also not masked by other sounds.
If you're wearing the best ear defenders which attenuate all sounds by about 30dB, and you assume your threshold of hearing is 10dBSPL (conservative), any sound above 40dBSPL is above the threshold of hearing. That's the level of a quiet conversation.
And because your ear defenders attenuate all sounds, masking is not really affected -- the sounds which would be masking the reversing beepers are also quieter.
There are nuances of course (hearing damage, and all the complicated effects that wearing ear defenders cause), but none of them are to the point that loud reversing noises are required because of hearing protection -- they are required to be heard over all the other loud noises on a construction site.
> The utility of having a backup beeper or any noise making device on that site is thus zero.
The inverse square law says otherwise; on site the distances will be much more apparent.
Exactly. That’s where the other comment about a “noise tax”, or enact fines for exceeding limits, are probably necessary to shift the calculus.
Japan is a good case study [1]. If nothing else, it’s fun to look at the charts showing noise reductions—not just in aggregate, but for each contributing input (e.g. engine, intake, exhaust, tires, cooling)—for both passenger vehicles and heavy equipment. Unfortunately, in the US, we have a few obstacles to legislation like this, least of which being public apathy as majority of voters who are not exposed to high sound levels daily.
“Japan's primary legislation governing noise regulation is the Environmental Noise Regulation Act, first introduced in 1986 and subsequently amended in 1999. This act sets different noise limits for different times of the day, with the maximum allowable noise level during the day set at 55 decibels and reduced to 45 decibels at night to prevent disturbances to those who are sleeping. Violators of these standards are subject to penalties.”
Would love to know what kind of noise and sound level was used for this test. Was it a continuous monotonous noise (such as white/pink/brown noise) at a fixed volume? Or was it some random noise that would "pop-up" randomly?
Does anyone know?
I would imagine that a noise that would randomly "pop-up" would be worse. But would be curious if that's not the case.
That's also what I was wondering- I sleep with a fan on for the white noise, otherwise I sleep very poorly if at all. I wonder if that sort of 'covers up' the spikes in noise you'd be hearing if the room were otherwise silent
This was ambient noise in the room, as measured by an Apple Watch. So “random,” real world noises that pop up, as opposed to a controlled level of white noise.
Something like the variability of noise (eg, maybe figure out the 25th percentile dbs across the night, and then count the spikes above that? or maybe count the number of times the slope goes above a certain value indicating sharp rises in volume that would disturb someone?)
I also would love to simply see the data based on the average of "N loudest moment(s)" during the sleep. eg: treat the dbs score for that night as the average of the N loudest moments over the night, and plot a series of graphs that show various values of N. (or make it 3d, but i've found many folks are not capable of reading those kinds of graphs)
I've been using earplugs practically every night for the past three years and I can't recommend them enough. While the particular kind I use (Mack's ultra soft) don't block out all the noise, there is a wide variety of noises that used to wake me up which don't anymore. If you haven't tried them I would highly recommend giving sleeping with earplugs a shot. It only takes a few days or so to get used to them.
In terms of downsides, only once in the past three years did I get some earwax clogged in some part of my ear which was easy to remove with some special spray (went to urgent care). Also, I have a very hard time sleeping without them anymore so I always make sure to have a pair at hand. Also, you may have to experiment with various brands and types as some brands are really uncomfortable and hurt my ear.
Foam are significantly less comfortable for side sleeping and block less noise than Silicone (Mack's) which still come in large sets for well under $1/pair.
I don't know about the 1100 but I have another model (ear classic), just simple foam earplugs, of the same manufacturer. Having gone through many different foam, silicon etc plugs from the pharmacy and grocery shop, the 3M are undeniably the best I've ever had. No pain from the foam expanding bigger than the ear canal (although it's initially bigger), no itching from sweat etc, no pressure on the eardrum when side-sleeping (that tinnitus feeling from some foam earplugs). They are literally perfect, and the noise blocking is the best I've experienced. I don't know what it is but perhaps they have some foam patented that only they use (probably poisonous or something in true evil company fashion though)
The only reason I tried them is that I found myself in a situation where my standard silicone earplugs were gone and where somebody gave me a box of hundreds of earplugs they didn't manage to sell at a concert. I was bracing myself for a terrible night of ear pain, but was pleasantly surprised of how superior they were to anything I had tried, still using earplugs from the very same box as my night-to-night noise relief
I use EAR Classics too. I sleep on a dense pillow, so when there's some noise outside/near the apartment I lay down on the side and put in the earplug into the "top" ear so that the other/bottom ear is then blocked by the pillow. If I change my position during sleep, the noise is usually gone by then (also I tend to be bothered less by noise if I'm already asleep). This is because for some reason I generally sleep better when my ears aren't covered.
That’s all great until something happens while you are sleeping that needs your attention. I’d love to be able to use something like that but being responsible for my family’s safety says I cannot.
Maybe there is room for a device that recognizes those types of sounds and maybe triggers a watch vibration would be a solution.
That's a valid point. Alarms of all sorts do still wake me up, along with crying babies. It worked well when my wife and I were taking shifts being with the baby. When it was my turn to rest, using earplugs definitely made my sleep time more effective.
I've been having issues sleeping lately, and a few days ago, the flat below us started demolishing walls at 8am. This has been going on for a week, and I've never slept better. It sounds like they're demolishing the floor I'm sleeping on, but somehow I can just ignore it and sleep soundly, whereas normally I wake up with the smallest sound, like a dog barking outside my soundproof windows.
That's like Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny where he stays overnight in a cabin and wakes up and freaks out at every little noise, but when he's held in contempt and there's a prison riot going on, he's sleeping like a baby.
In many animals, hearing gets less sensitive in general when they sleep. I think it's common for people to be surprised by that, but it works that way to maximize sleep function.
Dog's are thought to be an exception, because part of their domestication involved selection for the offspring that was more alert (watch dogs).
The brain is thought to be hyper sensitive to a certain subset of sounds while sleeping, such as babies crying.
White noise is thought to work by drowning out the sounds we are most sensitive to.
I didn't see a link to the paper, so can only assume they were introducing new noises at randomized decibel levels to study participants.
My start-up uses sound to enhance sleep's restorative function. So blankly saying "noise at decibel level x disrupts sleep" is not true.
Over the last 10 years, research has shown that precisely timed micro-auditory stimulations increase slow-wave activity, and accompanying biomarkers of health. There are now more than 50 published peer-reviewed papers regarding this phenomenon. We link to some of these on our website https://affectablesleep.com
Environmental noise is different than precise stimulation based noise, but most of us have an adaptation level to environmental noise.
I remember when I first moved to Chile having dinner with an Argentinian and an Indian, and the Argentinian said the streets in Santiago were so loud it was important to get an apartment on a higher floor. The Indian guy looked around and was like "what noise"? To him, Santiago was a peaceful and quiet environment.
I have even worse noise in my area — a widespread ground vibration across a few kilometers, like a constant loud 50Hz hum that causes a tingling sensation in my body. You can’t even block it by covering your ears. I've been experiencing this frequently, both thru the night and during the day, for the past five years here in Singapore has affected my sleep rhythm, can't sleep with that noise. I've unemployed for the past 5 years.
Low frequency noise is the worst! Probably a stupid question but do you know anyone else that can hear it? I had a low-frequency version of tinnitus and I spent weeks thinking it was some external noise
My mum hears it too, but the local authorities simply claimed they couldn't hear anything during that brief moment. They’d have to stay overnight to really hear and feel it — inside a room, not just in a public space. It even vibrate my eardrum like I'm sitting on an F16 pilot seat.
I don't hear it in other districts.
I wish there were an expert or researcher interested in these areas: residential buildings, shops, parks, churches, and schools.
I wish there were an expert or researcher interested in these areas: residential buildings, shops, parks, churches, and schools.
You mean an expert in acoustics related to those areas? There are lots of experts and researchers. Take a look at the Acoustical Society of America, the Institute of Noise Control Engineering, and Council for Accreditation in Occupational Hearing Conservation for starters.
Penn State, University of Hartford, Purdue University, Michigan Technological University, University of Nebraska, Morgan State Univeristy, and Brigham Young University (among others) all have strong acoustics programs with research in a bunch of areas.
That might make you want to look at that list of organizations and then seek similar organizations or schools in Singapore, if you didn't already try. Good luck with the hum.
i’d try getting this in front of a journalist or news station. They may be more excited to investigate “weird” claims like this one. Sorry to hear about your situation.
That could be hard — my building is vibrating as well. It might be due to major underground train construction. The authorities either couldn’t pinpoint the source of the noise or just claim they don’t hear it.
I wish someone could solve the problem at the receiver end, i.e., invent noise-cancelling headphones/earplugs that actually cancel noise as effectively as eye-masks cancel light.
In addition to sleep needs, the world has gotten noisier now that people are habitually using speakerphones in public in the most obnoxious ways.
Gets you some pretty good quiet for sleep. It's not active noise cancelling, but they work pretty well.
Anecdotally if you wear a pair of westone solids, and then a pair of earmuffs on top of that, you are basically just hearing through your bones, which can't be avoided (with passive or active).
Interesting! It could be a confounder as well. For example, maybe people who live in dense (loud) urban dwellings also tend to have more day-to-day life stress generally, leading to reduced sleep quality. (Of course, reduced sleep quality could also be a source of more life stress...)
Would your userbase be up for a little experiment: adding white/pink/rainfall/etc noise at various volumes? I bet you'd see an inverted U shaped curve, with sleep quality increasing at relatively low volume levels, and then hitting some maximum and decreasing when it gets too loud! (Agree with other comments about looking at intra-night variance in noise level.)
I haven’t seen it mentioned, but a few extra sleep hacks I have learned:
- I use the chili-sleep to control temperature.
- I use sleep headphones to drift to sleep to a story. If I wake up ruminating, I turn the headphones back on and it helps break the cycle.
- Sleep socks. I sleep with socks on.
The worst is this a "fashion" of modifying vehicles, illegally, to make them sound like airplanes. I live in Sweden and, believe me, it is absolute hell on hearth.
Low frequency noise is the worst. Extremely difficult often impossible to eliminate without a lot of expense. Travels long distances. Absolute nightmare for people sensitive to noise
I wish they’d make car alarms illegal. afaict they do nothing. no one looks. It does not stop car theft or breakins. all it does ruin everyone’s sleep.
Especially in 2025, if you want to know if your car is being whatever triggers an alarm then have it send you a message that only bothers you and not several hundred other people.
There is your new startup idea for ycombinator. car alarm app with optional $$$ track down service :p
I find this hard to believe this is universally true. I sleep much worse without noise. I use a fan or a speaker to add noise to the room. If I don't, I wake up constantly.
My apartment is along a corridor that is frequented by emergency vehicles, so sirens are frequent during normal sleep hours, and my apartment windows face the sunrise. I've adopted a number of things over the years to combat all of this:
- Blackout curtains
- Earplugs
- White noise maker (just an air purifier but it does the same thing)
Incredibly, the noise insulation between floors and ESPECIALLY walls in both hotels around the world and even expensive, modern apartment buildings in Manhattan is absolutely atrocious. So I end up booking Airbnb's when I travel and renting top floors whenever I can.
I find the build quality of new buildings (again, even uber luxury apartment condos) in the U.S. absolutely crap compared to Europe (I'm thinking especially of France and Germany).
Over here on HN you have a strong contingent of people who push pro-density, pro-city, and anti-car. But some people (like myself) who suffer from a sensitive sleep are deeply affected and consider moving to the woods away from people just for this problem. I find the 'SLAM' sound of doors (in New York there's a spring loading per building code), the stomp stomp of upstairs, and the bass music of adjacent neighbors to be deeply disruptive from a psychological perspective.
Might be! And some people might not deserve sleep! But
"every half hour with pipe-like electronic devices that cause loud clanging noises"
seems to be the specific relevant factor.
"Stanford University sleep medicine professor who says in a court-filed declaration that Lipsey “is exposed to unrelenting noise that is out of his control that can further (fuel) his insomnia and potentially worsens his health.”
I'm using pink noise to suppress my REM phase and get more deep sleep when my body needs extra regeneration at the expense of mental regeneration. Luckily there's none of that random street noise in my neighborhood.
I personally would not be able to sleep well with earplugs. The feeling of pressure in my ears, combined with the 'pushing' of the earplug if I rolled over to lay on my side would be very uncomfortable.
Try “3M earplugs yellow” on amazon. They are pretty much fully immersed in the ear (for me), and the insulation is very good. The pressure - yeah it took maybe a few days to get used to, but…
The effects for me (living in Brussels city centre, so quite noisy - police, ambulance, sometimes loud tourists past midnight, and a bit of construction at 6am nearby to keep it real :-) ) were very pronounced:
From needing 9 hours and feeling groggy in the mornings anyway, to easily going on 7-8, feeling very refreshed and alert each day.
A cool side effect was that this superpower works also while traveling - so, I no longer care how noisy the airco is in the hotel room, being next to the lift, or having the window above the lively bar.
The only downside with those earplugs that they are good maybe for 3-4 nights and then are too squished to be useful; but the upsides more than make it up for me.
I've tried the squishy foam earplugs, and they always fall out. Other suggestions, such as silicone and custom earplugs, are something I'm going to try. Let's see if they help.
However, what destroys my sleep is the light from early morning, streetlights, and the neighbor's porch light. Unfortunately, our bedroom faces southeast and features French doors that open onto an east-facing three-season porch, allowing sunlight to stream in. Yeah, I've got curtains everywhere, and I have room-darkening curtains on order. If those don't work, the next step is putting solar panels over my bedroom windows. I figure if I'm going to keep light out, I might as well put it to work some other way.
As an experiment, I'm using my car camping mattress in my office, which is the quietest room in the house, and I'm blocking the light from the windows with curtains and cardboard. So far, it's the best sleep I've had in years. There's a bit of domestic disharmony now, but hopefully my partner and I can work out a compromise on light-blocking curtains and keeping them fucking shut.
Have you tried a blackout sleep mask? I had to try a few to find one which consistently stays in place overnight and doesn't put any pressure on my eyes, but once I found one it solved all light-related problems for me.
I've tried them, and they don't work for me. They trigger a bit of claustrophobia. I sleep with a full-face CPAP mask, and I'm not sure I can take anything more strapped to my face.
My wife started snoring pretty badly while she was pregnant so ended up buying these earplugs https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPH7HNT1. I've never been able to sleep in the foam earplugs as they either fall out or the pressure starts to really irritate after a while, but these don't put pressure and they stay in all night. They're also really block out noise.
Nice. Which model do you use? And do they sell them in the U.S.? Not that I would mind making a trip overseas and getting away from the insanity here for a little while, but it adds to the cost.
I have the "Relax & Sleep" pair. I got mine from a Finnish reseller, and thought they were a global company but they seem to list only European locations. I believe thomann.de delivers to the U.S., but that's little help since the point of these would be to get them made individually.
I would assume that your local audiologist or music instrument store will know what the U.S. equivalent to these is. It seems to me that Elacin's biggest market is musicians who want a comfortable pair of earplugs with a flat frequency response.
It's rare for me to encounter another Belgian on HN but I'll definitely try this.
Sleeping roadside till i have my upper floor renovated has been a disaster for my sleep and functioning.
I've found success with silicon plugs, typically marketed at swimmers. They're like little balls of soft material that you roll up and squish over the entrance, without inserting into the ear. They lay pretty flat and I can sleep on my side with them in. Now that my third neighbor in a row has acquired the loudest, most constantly barking outdoor dog imaginable, I functionally cannot sleep without them.
This was my experience until I purchased custom molded earplugs a year ago. It's one of the best purchases I've made. They're superior to off-the-shelf plugs in many ways:
1. They don't fall out, because they "hook into" the shape of your ear.
2. They sit much closer to the inner ear, so they feel invisible when side-sleeping.
3. It's a perfect fit every time, so you don't have to worry about noise leakage or discomfort caused by pressure.
If you don't want to spend $200 on a pair of plugs from an audiologist (I'd strongly urge you to reconsider!), the best off-the-shelf alternative for me was silicone plugs. To solve the side-sleeping problem with silicone plugs, you can tear them in half or use children's versions depending on your ear canal size.
If enjoy and pay to see live music, you should spring for a set of "musician's earplugs". They're molded just like safety/sleeping earplugs, but they use a flat 10-15dB attenuating filter. They make the music quieter without distorting it.
Symphony players wear them because brass/percussion is loud enough to cause hearing damage with hours of exposure. I've sung in mine for Easter morning services where I was wedged between a celebratory trumpet and an organ with all the stops out.
They're not cheap, but they're not very expensive in the world of Ticketmaster fees.
I've never found ear plugs which are comfortable inside my ear canal for more than a few hours (including some extra-small child ones), but the silicone ones which cover the opening rather than being inserted into the ear work well for me. They don't block sound as well but it's still a very noticeable difference.
Having been using earplugs sleeping for the past three years, you will definitely hear things like alarms. Even our babies crying will consistently wake me up. With our baby, when it was my time to rest, having earplugs made a huge difference in terms of sleep quality.
While in the subject of noise, I'd like some research on the effect of "popcorn" tuned car exhausts on the mental health of people suffering from PTSD or are just generally sensitive.
Unfortunately even without engine noise people will still install gigantic subwoofers in their car and roll around rattling windows. This has consistently been the biggest problem with my sleep for years, and nothing I've been able to do (including trying to move to different locations) has helped because they are so incredibly loud and prevalent these days.
I bought an apartment next to a cycling path that connects the area to the city centre and that was singlehandedly the biggest mistake of my life, because the path also allows mopeds, which have engines orders of magnitude louder than loudest cars. This is insanity. Thankfully, the city is planning to ban fossil-fuel mopeds within five years. They already started phasing them out, you can't register a new one, only old ones are allowed. These are going to be five very long years though.
Also, it's a mostly black area, which means people hanging out and talking right in front of the apartment building, even though there's a public park five minutes of walk away. When I was searching for an apartment to buy, there was one on tenth floor, and I regret not buying that one, because I'd be shielded from all the noise on the street.
I was fully conviced that I'd be able to stomach living in poorer area and wait for gentrification to happen. I can live with trash on the street. I can live with vandalism. I can live with beggars by the supermarket. I can live with theft and other crime. But the noise. The noise is fucking unbearable.
My dream is to wait until the apartment doubles or triples in value, then sell it, and move to rural shithole where nobody lives.
1. Diversity and inclusivity does not work. People segregate themselves into groups because it's easier for them to communicate. White people will always prefer to hang out with other white people, and black people will always prefer to hang out with other black people. This is clearly visible in my city - all the black people are concentrated in a ghetto, and on the street you never see mixed-race groups. Similarly, at work when I go for lunch I notice that people tend to gravitate towards same or similar nationalities.
2. I am a full-blown classist and I see no problem with that. I grew up in a small village and everyone who escaped poverty hates poor people.
Yeah, it is sad to think how different things could have been, especially when you consider how loud/dangerous/toxic early cars were.
On the other hand, before that, we (humans) allowed horses to shit (and decompose) in the streets, and long before that, we invited livestock to spend the winter in the same room. So the past wasn't idyllically clean or well organized either.
FYI a literature review from a deep research AI
======
The effect of noise on sleep is multifaceted, involving various types of noise exposure, physiological mechanisms, and consequences on sleep quality and health.
I. Introduction
Environmental and occupational noise refers to unwanted or harmful sounds from sources such as traffic, aircraft, railways, and workplaces. Noise pollution is a significant public health issue due to its widespread prevalence and impact on sleep and overall health.
II. Types of Noise Exposure
Environmental noise includes road traffic, aircraft, and railway noise. Aircraft noise, for example, has been shown to negatively affect sleep in children, whereas road traffic noise may have less impact on autonomic activity during sleep [Effect of Noise on Sleep and Autonomic Activity in Children].
Occupational noise exposure also contributes to sleep disturbances and has been linked to sleep loss and fragmentation [The effects of occupational noise on sleep].
Intentional masking noise such as white or pink noise is sometimes used as a sleep aid to improve sleep quality in noisy environments [The effects of white noise on sleep].
III. Physiological Mechanisms
During sleep, the auditory system continues to process sounds, and noise can lower arousal thresholds, causing awakenings or micro-arousals. Noise exposure activates the autonomic nervous system, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, and stimulates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, leading to hormonal and metabolic changes [Environmental noise and sleep disturbances].
IV. Effects on Sleep Architecture
Noise exposure reduces total sleep time and sleep efficiency, increases sleep fragmentation, and causes more frequent micro-arousals. It also alters sleep stages by decreasing deep sleep (slow-wave sleep) and REM sleep, which are critical for restorative sleep [Effects of environmental noise on sleep].
V. Health and Daytime Consequences
Poor sleep due to noise leads to daytime sleepiness, cognitive impairments, and mood disturbances. Chronic noise-related sleep disruption is associated with increased cardiovascular and metabolic risks, such as hypertension and glucose metabolism disturbances. It also negatively affects quality of life and can contribute to burnout [Environmental Noise and Effects on Sleep], [Effects of personal noise exposure, sleep quality, and burnout].
VI. Vulnerable and Special Populations
Children are particularly sensitive to noise, with aircraft noise shown to disrupt their sleep more than road traffic noise. Older adults and individuals with pre-existing sleep disorders are also more vulnerable to noise-induced sleep disturbances [Effect of Noise on Sleep and Autonomic Activity in Children].
VII. Noise as a Sleep Aid
Paradoxically, steady background noise such as white or pink noise can improve sleep quality by masking disruptive environmental sounds. Studies have shown that white noise can significantly enhance subjective and objective sleep measures in noisy urban settings. However, potential downsides include hearing damage and psychological dependency on noise for sleep [Noise as a sleep aid: A systematic review], [The effects of white noise on sleep].
VIII. Mitigation and Future Directions
Effective strategies to mitigate noise effects on sleep include engineering controls like soundproofing, use of earplugs, and regulatory noise limits. Behavioral interventions and public health policies are also important. Future research is needed to clarify long-term effects, dose-response relationships, and to develop personalized interventions [The Effect of Room Acoustics on the Sleep Quality of Healthy Sleepers].
In summary, noise negatively impacts sleep by disrupting sleep architecture and triggering physiological stress responses, leading to adverse health outcomes. While some forms of noise can aid sleep by masking disturbances, overall noise reduction remains critical for improving sleep quality and health.
References
Environmental noise and sleep disturbances: A threat to health?
Demian Halperin et al. Sleep Science, 2014 Nov 15.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4608916/
Poor sleep causes measurable changes on these systems. Experimental studies demonstrated that both sleep restriction and poor quality sleep affect glucose ...
Effects of environmental noise on sleep
Kenneth I Hume et al. Noise & health, 2012.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23257581/
This paper summarizes the findings from the past 3 year's research on the effects of environmental noise on sleep and identifies key future research goals.
The Effect of Room Acoustics on the Sleep Quality of Healthy Sleepers
Ingo Fietze et al. Noise & Health, 2016 Sep-Oct.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5187651/
Noise is one of the factors that can seriously disturb sleep, and sound volume is an important factor in this context. One strategy involves avoiding ...
Noise as a sleep aid: A systematic review
Samantha M. Riedy et al. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2021/02/01.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10870...
... sleep aid, especially since it may also negatively affect sleep and hearing. ... Suzuki et al. Sleep deepening effect of steady pink noise. J Sound Vib. (1991).
Environmental Noise and Effects on Sleep: An Update to the WHO Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Michael G Smith et al. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2022 Jul 11.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9272916/
Jul 11, 2022 ... To what extent have the following outcomes of railway noise occurred in the past 12 months? Railway noise disturbs when falling asleep. Not ...
Effects of personal noise exposure, sleep quality, and burnout on quality of life: An online participation cohort study in Taiwan
Ta-Chien Chan et al. Science of The Total Environment, 2024/03/10.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972...
Mar 10, 2024 ... To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the pathways through which daily noise exposure, sleep quality, and personal burnout affect ...
Effect of Noise on Sleep and Autonomic Activity in Children according to Source
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8476937/
Road traffic noise did not significantly alter sleep or autonomic activity in children, whereas aircraft noise exerted a negative effect on sleep.
The effects of occupational noise on sleep: A systematic review
Saeid Yazdanirad et al. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2023/12/01.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10870...
One of the important effects due to noise exposure is sleep loss/disturbance, which has received less attention. Sleep disturbance is defined as problems with ...
The effects of white noise on sleep and duration in individuals living in a high noise environment in New York City
Matthew R Ebben et al. Sleep medicine, 2021/7.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34049045/
Our data show that white noise significantly improved sleep based on subjective and objective measurements in subjects complaining of difficulty sleeping.
FYI, there's been tons of research of the effects of noise on sleep from different sources. There have been studies ranging from in-lab experiments, to in-home experiments with artificial and natural sources. If you're interested, some resources:
Institute of Noise Control Engineering Digital library: https://www.inceusa.org/publications/ince-digital-library/ (papers older than 10 years old are available free)
Federal Interagency Committee on Aviation Noise: https://fican1.wordpress.com/findings/ (focuses on aviation noise)
Acoustical Society of America Lay Language Papers: https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/ (search for "sleep" -- the ASA has a full library of more detailed research but the documents cost money unless you're an ASA member)
World Health Organization guidelines on noise - https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/343936/WHO-EURO-... (doesn't get into specifics on research on sleep, but does refer recommended limits to sleep disturbance)
NIH has done a bunch of research on sleep disturbance from noise, you would need to search through their library
edit (one more): TRB/National Academies https://nap.nationalacademies.org/search/?rpp=20&ft=1&term=n...
A lot of the stuff that posters are asking for have in fact been done, it just takes some digging through the research sites to find them. There's a lot of variation in the data, the hypothesis is that sleep sensitivity varies a lot based on various physical factors (age being a big one).
Interesting, perhaps age related deafness contributes.
https://canadianaudiologist.ca/a-new-perspective-on-chronic-...
https://www.icben.org/2017/ICBEN%202017%20Papers/SubjectArea...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-024-00660-3
I think partly the issue is that how we measure noise doesn't match how noise causes injury. Your cochlea acts as a spiral resonant tube, essentially a "physical FFT," concentrating energy at a particular frequency onto a particular location in the spiral. Too much (local!) energy damages the hair cells, causing conductive hearing loss.
But because we calculate A-weighted decibels by summing all frequencies and then checking if we're above the injury threshold (vs checking whether we exceed the injury threshold at any frequency), using A-weighted decibels can't accurately determine damaging noise levels. If all the energy is concentrated at Middle A it will cause more damage than spreading the energy out across the spectrum, even if the A-weighted decibels come out equal.
It's a somewhat subtle, wrong order-of-operations problem. There's also a separate problem that A-weighting is designed to normalize for perception at various frequencies, not hearing damage.
I've tried searching the literature to find out whether this is either 1)wrong, or 2)generally known within the fields of audiology and occupational hygiene, but so far I've come up empty.
--
I recall an HN poster long ago saying how they wore earplugs daily to achieve "super hearing." It occurs to me that all they were doing was actually protecting their ears from damage. :-|
I've tried searching the literature to find out whether this is either 1)wrong, or 2)generally known within the fields of audiology and occupational hygiene, but so far I've come up empty.
FWIW, I've also heard the same, but don't remember where off the top of my head. It's at least potentially true, but the conventional wisdom among acousticians/noise control engineering is that age-related hearing loss is mostly to increasing age rather than external factors.
Oh, I meant about the wrong order-of-operations problem with decibels, which I have never seen anyone talk about. If you've heard of it please let me know.
The links discuss the evidence that hearing loss isn't inevitable with age, including examples of pre-industrial societies with quiet environments that when tested showed no hearing degradation with age.
The controversy seems to be mostly about how much of that effect was caused by good diet vs lack of exposure to loud sounds. I tend to think both are needed to be fully protective, eg to take an extreme example alcohol is known to cause damage to hearing cells even without exposure to loud sounds.
I expect, with apologies to Tolstoy, "All dysfunctional hearing is different, whereas all healthy hearing is the same."
I'd expect the relationship goes the other way around. Most old people I know sleep lightly comparatively
I’ve spent years “fixing” my sleep. Things I recommend:
* a sleep tracker. I love AutoSleep - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/autosleep-track-sleep-on-watch...
* Any kind of white noise. I use an air purifier at home, and a little pocket size white noise machine when I travel.
* find and eliminate any noises in your home. Computers, fridges, squeaky doors, etc.
* find and eliminate any lights. Especially stupid power and status LEDs. Bedroom should be pitch black at night. Electrical tape works well for this.
* Blackout curtains
* cheap eye mask
* Magnesium Glycate supplement
* Earplugs- https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0015TBGR6
* And finally, a recent addition that I’ve fallen in love with is sleep ear buds: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DT9GBFQ2
Although, I would wait on getting sleep ear buds, Anker just announced a new model with ANC and a similar price.
Any advice on how to eliminate noisy neighbours that would randomly drop their shit at random intervals in the middle of night and let their child to stomp around every late evening?
Unfortunately, the best way to cure this is "don't live underneath other people".
I second this. If you really have to live in a flat, top floor is always the superior option.
Literally the superior option.
Not unless you live in a country like Germany where AC is the devil and the top floor is always incredibly hot.
I used to live in a wooden construction apartment, with neighbors above me. They themselves stomped a lot, both late at night and early in the morning, somehow.
Then they had a kid, which grew up and of course would run around the house at any hour. I was getting terrible sleep and it was driving me crazy.
All I could really do was move, and I made sure the next building was reinforced concrete, and that I would be on the top floor. The unit also ended up being on one end so only one wall shared with a neighbor.
It was instant relief and absolutely worth the move. It sucks though because obviously not everyone can live on the top floor of a building. If you're a heavy sleeper then I guess this is less of a problem, so I hope we have enough heavy sleepers in society so there's less competition for top floors. Probably wishful thinking though because the top floor is desired for other reasons unrelated to sleep.
Another thing to avoid are hardwood floors. I live in a concrete high rise but that wasn't enough to deal with a neighbor upstairs who would stomp around in shoes on the — admittedly very nice looking — white oak floor. It's basically a giant drum. Even vinyl is quieter.
Ear plugs! https://acscustom.com/uk/products/other-products/sleep-sound
That would be my no 1 go-to, if I didn't have to remain alert for my 3 year old sleeping next door (he can seep through the noisy neighbors though!)... (btw our neighbours are underneath and they cook at night, and talk very loudly)
Unfortunately, ear plugs would not help against low frequency bass noise, which this noise typically is.
Ear plugs should reduce intensity of sounds across the board. Yes, they’re less effective against low frequency noise, but reducing the intensity any amount goes a long way – the logarithmic scale is real!
I also personally find high frequency noise to be more disruptive: a car speeding by making wind noise is a lot worse than a large truck rumbling by slowly. Lower frequency is lower energy, after all
You know, I work in hospitals all day and people are always stomping around and moving heavy equipment. But you never hear anything coming through the ceiling.
Contact your state representative and ask them to do something about the building codes. It's a completely voluntary problem. American buildings are noisy because we decided that was okay.
You assume I'm in US, while I'm not. Not even EU. I know building owner personally and the only factual way is to evict those people. The only problem is that building owner is leasing them an apartment, and you can't evict people basing on household noises, even if they are driving me insane.
>Contact your state representative and ask them to do something about the building codes. It's a completely voluntary problem. American buildings are noisy because we decided that was okay.
Congratulations on finding an equally terrible and bad for everybody apartment-living analog to the sort of suburbanite Karen opinion that underpins meddling HOAs and busybody municipal codes.
If you want a quieter apartment pony up to live in a nicer one. Don't force the rest of society to shoulder the expense.
You should probably read The Market for Lemons. It's incredibly difficult to predict from the buyer's perspective how noisy an apartment will be. This is [one reason] why we have regulations.
> Any advice on how to eliminate noisy neighbours
... Not from a Jedi. :p
No need for fancy light sabers, put them to the sword.
I've also been doing small improvements to my sleep over the years and share some of your recommendations! What's worked best for me have been:
1. Good mattress and pillow (this is a 101 kind of thing).
2. Having the right temperature (same as above).
3. White noise. I also use a white noise machine and the White Noise app on iOS (which I bought for like $1 years ago and still use it). Ironically, I don't use white noise but brown noise, which is slightly more soothing to me.
4. Air purifier, not necessarily for the white noise it produces because it's pretty silent, but because that way I guarantee that I get at least 8 hours of purified air a day.
5. Black out curtains.
6. Eye masks. I actually wear two at once -- the first one to block any lights, the second one to press against my eyelashes, which I find it better for sleeping.
7. Magnesium Glycinate. I've tried different supplements, different forms of magnesium, and even different brands, and the one that I currently use has worked wonders for me. Made me go from being a light sleeper to a medium-heavy sleeper.
Haven't tried earplugs, but I don't really feel the need to. Another thing I tried (but never noticed a real difference) was using a small piece of tape on my lips to avoid opening my mouth.
> Ironically, I don't use white noise but brown noise, which is slightly more soothing to me
In case you or others didn't know, iOS has a built in noise generator with different presets under the accessibility options. Sometimes I use it with AirPods and active noise cancellation and it pretty much guarantees I can get a solid block of sleep, at least as long as the batteries last in one go.
The feature is called "Background Sounds"
What is the purpose of hearing the white noise? Is it to shield from other sounds? Or to distract from thinking? Are you focussing on it or not?
The brain can easily tune it out and it masks another intermittent sounds.
I may suggest custom ear buds. Best $200 you'll spend. The original method is a wax form, but now there is a 3D scanning tool to map the shape of your ear.
2 euro silicone ear plugs from Aliexpress easily beat the custom ear plugs I had.
I have the same experience. Custom ones literally made my ears ache. Probably the harder material. Note they were made out of 3D scan of my ears..
Currently using Hansaplast Lärmstopp.
... or just buy silicone ones from the pharmacy (the ones for swimmers).
I keep some of these on me at all times in case I end up next to any loud speakers.
Same thing - I've been adjusting my sleep since first Sleep Cycle came for iPhone. I started with a "smart" alarm and learned alarms are harmful. I didn't need an alarm, I just needed 7-8h of sleep. I was going to bed 1-2AM.
I'm doing all of the above with the following differences:
- I use AirPods pro. They are not that comfortable, but leaving a Audible low in background helps falling asleep and also getting back to sleep rather than picking random problems to solve and eventually waking up. It was "life-saver" when I started my first company before learning to manage stress.
- I used these 3M sleeping ear buds and they were the most confortable https://www.amazon.com/3M-Disposable-Earplugs-Quiet-Sleep/dp...
- Extra pillow over head, helps a lot (I have no idea why)
What does AutoSleep offer above and beyond Apple’s Health app?
I have (and recommend) a white noise machine at home, but when I travel, I use the awesome MyNoise app, which lets you EQ the noise precisely so you can target the specific annoyance in your environment.
Apple commonly says I get more hours of sleep than I know I do. Apple counts just being relaxed as sleeping. Whereas I can tune AutoSleep to correctly identify the difference between me sleep and just being super relaxed. Thus I get a much more accurate image of what is working
Also the apple sleep graph is actually terrible. Almost impossible to understand when wake up are occurring.
I will definitely check it out then as I am frustrated by the same problem where Apple shows me as asleep when I am meditating myself back to sleep. It even shows me as sleeping when I have pushed the crown to see the time!
Would like to second ear plugs, it took some testing to find the right softness/size because I have very small ear canals, but these slim-fit earplugs have been life-changing for my sleep: https://a.co/d/38Kftbm
The earplugs don't completely cut out environmental noise, but they dampen it enough that I don't find myself being awakened by any bumps in the night.
And snipping down the tail ends of the earplugs with scissors helps reduce pressure if you're a side sleeper.
I can't stand earplugs, and think of ear buds as counter-productive. I've used (silken) eye masks, but have no use for them anymore, because successfully blacked out everything.
Don't know what to make of white-noise, do purring cats count? Or really relaxed snuggling with sexy gals after having fucked each others brains out? Or both?
I have a street in front of my bedroom and I'm wondering how well ANC earbuds work in that case. Will it be completely silent or will there still be some kind of whoosh-sound?
A large quantity of disposable earplugs is so cheap that I'd recommend you try that before investing time and money into ANC earbuds.
My spouse snores loudly, and a $15 container of 50 pairs has lasted more than 2 years, and saved our ability to co-sleep (I was only a couple nights away from moving to our guest room). We're also on a street with a very permissive speed limit, and we're under the approach path of the nearby airport, and it's never a problem.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0051U7W32 I got these, $15 for 50 pairs; the GP comment is $40 for 200 pairs which is a better value but more investment if you wind up dissatisfied
It won’t be completely silent, if only because ANC always comes with low-level white noise.
I second the disposable earplugs recommendations.
Getting blackout curtains and killing off any stray light from clocks was huge for me.
Sleep eye mask
Appreciate the list. How do you eliminate fridge noise (besides replacing the fridge entirely)?
I don't know how to state this well but I find the fact that nearly all new apartment buildings in California are only allowed to be built on busy streets very frustrating. I'm guessing it's part nimby-ism and part zoning but every time I see a new apartment complex it's next to the busiest streets in the city (LA, SF). It's like many things, if you want health you must be rich. If you can't afford a house then F.U. You get a loud apartment with constant traffic noise.
I *almost* feel like it should be illegal to build them next to the freeway like
Those ones just north of SFO next to the 110: https://maps.app.goo.gl/sAkUMhmnutZ1jFd27
The ones in downtown LA next to the 110: https://maps.app.goo.gl/4mBVLo12hLR4EwU16
The ones north of LAX at Howard Hughes: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Z8bnB7wR5jDBddhg6
I don't actually think I think they should be illegal but dang it, I wish there were more options for new apartments. In LA there are lots of older apartment buildings in quiet residential neighborhoods built 50+ years ago.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/KMLav1zLiQZK6T8L6
https://maps.app.goo.gl/aUH52rBAbaHExjzB6
They are no longer allowed to be built AFAICT.
> only allowed to be built on busy streets
Is this true or a misleading observation?
I can see some argument about it, increasing traffic in areas that aren't equipped for it if the building is large enough. But it might just be market forces, too: in larger cities, it's often more desirable to be near a major artery. Earplugs (if the noise bothers you) vs a longer commute.
It is quite literally illegal to build anything but detached single family homes on 95.8 percent of the total residential land area in California / 75% of the residential land area in most major American cities.
"Residential land area"? Much of California's land has no zoning at all. Of course, it's not near any cities either (or near any road noise).
It is illegal to build housing without a permit, and you will not be issued a permit on much of California’s land.
Residential land area = land you can build housing on
https://belonging.berkeley.edu/single-family-zoning-californ...
Daily reminder that our zoning policy is deeply racist and evil
I don’t know about “only allowed”, but this is a thing:
https://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/senate-passes-senator-wiener...
That's not a problem with the location. That's a problem with building materials. I've lives on the busiest street in town, with well insulated walls and windows that block out street noise. And I've lived in poorly -constructed suburban houses that admit noise from across the neighborhood.
I disagree. The location is definitely a factor. If you live within 300 feet (about 100 meters) of a multi-lane highway, then depending on the wind patterns, you are definitely getting more exposure to pollutants that come from cars, trucks, or their brakes and tires. But no one in California is ready to talk about addressing this because it would require radically changing the status quo.
So you’re saying people living in apartments are required to never open their windows?
I’m all for better construction but I still want to be able to open my windows without having to let in tons of noise and car exhaust
Check out the location of these condos in downtown Toronto built alongside the Gardiner Expressway, a very busy 90km/h (~55mph) highway: https://maps.app.goo.gl/TGLCBJGbrSEkAm7W6
The satellite view shows many units in multiple buildings directly next to this highway with no noise protection: https://maps.app.goo.gl/JA4jMPSSYsDBq5my5
Years ago I lived near a busy four-lane road with what seemed like a reasonable 60km/h speed limit. However, when it rained, the noise from the car tires on the wet road made it difficult to hear music from my radio. It was very unpleasant to leave the balcony doors open, as the constant din starts to work its way into your brain and make it very difficult to focus.
https://cayimby.org/legislation/sb-79/
They will be allowed by right near any type of transit stop if SB79 goes through!
This entrenches that behavior because the transit stops are often on arterials.
Hopefully the legislators have thought of this and extended the downzoning to half a mile even for BRT stops in the middle of the sunset district :)
Streets are much quieter at lower speed limits. There is definitely room for improvement here from the traffic engineers.
To a point. The problem is that the kind of people who are always screeching about traffic speeds are never satisfied and below a certain threshold the only way to go get slower is 4-way stops. And once those go in you get to listen to every motorcycle and delivery truck accelerate after the stop.
Downtown is very low speed but very noisy.
Say what you will about the suburbs but the grass and landscaping on each and every property is like noise cancelling foam being applied compared to the hardscaping downtown.
This is why I moved to suburbs tbh
Compared to the city it's so quiet and peaceful. My sleep is much better
I was looking for an apartment on the SF Peninsula a couple years back. Nearly all apartment buildings constructed in recent years are right next to the freeway or right next to the CalTrain train tracks. Lots of air and noise pollution, and it feels like borderline hostility towards renters. Lived there for a short while and ultimately moved out of the Bay Area because of the poor options for renters in that area (although it gets better the further south you go) and of course the sky-high housing prices.
A couple things:
1) I’d like to see additional measures beyond dB. A 50dB consistent white noise does not bother me (and may even enhance my sleep) but an intermittent off/on sound of the same magnitude has a very different effect
2) what is the accuracy of the consumer metrics compared to medical benchmarks? In other words, how reliable are the sleep measures of consumer devices? Anecdotally, I’ve noticed my watch thinks I’m sleeping sometimes when I watch a movie, and I’ve heard MDs say the metrics aren’t accurate enough to make strong conclusions.
#1 is a great idea for follow-up -- looking at variance, 90th percentile vs median, and so on. There's probably some very salient measure of sleep-affecting noise that we can derive from the data.
On the accuracy of sleep metrics, when Apple Watch makes an error, it tends to misclassify deep or REM sleep as core (light) sleep, or waking as light sleep. It's relatively rare to misclassify deep or REM sleep as awake, or deep as REM (and vice versa). That's partly why we focus on those specific sleep metrics. You can see a full confusion matrix here: https://www.empirical.health/metrics/deep-sleep-percent#accu...
Thanks! That’s great information. Do you have any data on how that performance compares to medical-grade devices?
The confusion matrix linked above compares the Apple Watch to polysomnography equipment (which is the medical device used in a sleep lab). It doesn't _quite_ answer your question, since we're assuming the polysomnography equipment is ground truth, but it at least gives an idea of the discordance between a consumer device and a medical device.
There is a field dedicated to this called as psychoacoustics. Sound pressure level (SPL) alone won’t work for this experiment like you said. There are other metrics like steady state and transient noise, masking from different frequencies having different effects on humans. It is definitely doable but far more complicated than the tweets seem to make it sound.
It would also be interesting to see the effects of intermittent noise when there is ambient background noise.
Yes i always sleep with a nature sound generator. It's comforting.
yes, that would be nice to have. but surely the data we have already would suggest for the benefit of our entire society, especially children (with the link between good sleep and mental development), we should incentivise thicker windows, better sills and other quick wins now
To the point above, we should be careful about making strong conclusions if there is a lot of uncertainty in the underlying data.
On the contrary, we gain more by making faster decisions than we do by being 100% precise
Nobody claimed we need 100% precision (or, more to the point, 100% certainty). But I would argue the level of our convictions should be proportional to the risk and level of certainty.
To the point being made, for most Americans the cost of updating your building envelope and fenestration is relatively high. Yet if we look at the accuracy of the data (compared to the medical device standard), it’s moderate accuracy. So we’re taking a high risk for something that we’re only moderately confident will work. That’s not a good tradeoff. There may be interventions that are lower risk that make for a more balanced approach.
“Move fast and break things” as a general philosophy is a risk-blind approach.
This isn't the first study on noise and sleep, in fact it's barely scientific compared to the rest of the research.
There is no scientific disagreement as to the correlation, it's just "how big" and "what specifically".
Compare the downside of "smaller impact than expected" with the cost of delay and it's a no-brainer
>smaller impact than expected
Yes, it’s about both effect size and uncertainty. That’s science. But your original post also brought policy into play. Unless you actually know that uncertainty, effect size, and those costs (including opportunity costs), you’re just making stuff up because “it just makes sense so it must be true.” That’s neither good science, nor good policy.
Advocating for big policy changes (like changing building codes) without understanding those aspects is like jumping into a pool headfirst before knowing the depth.
and this is how societal progress slowly crawls to a halt.
Moving fast and breaking things has a place. It’s just an error to think it applies to everything. There’s a reason why it’s usually relegated to relatively low-risk applications. I doubt you’d advocate an avionics engineer to take the same attitude.
You're the only one who said break things
It’s natural consequence of risk-blind policy making.
The idea that we can move fast and not break things without understanding the systemic risk is naive. I’m fine with moving fast if we understand the risk and the risk is borne by the appropriate parties. Your previous comments are a little too hand-wavy to indicate a nuanced understanding of the risk.
A lot of folks are talking about the “consistency” of a sound (constant white noise vs random sounds) and its volume, but I feel like the nature of the sound matters a lot more.
I’ll respond much differently to my bedroom door opening or a voice speaking than I do a bus outside.
It reminds me of the anecdote where human researchers rang bells near bears (human sounds) and the bears didn’t care, but if they broke a large bundle of branches (bear sounds), the bears went berserk.
I feel like our subconscious is a lot more involved here than we give it credit for.
This is especially true for sleep since we can be pretty good at incorporating external sounds into our dreams. It's been shown in controlled experiments. Seems likely that certain noises are generically easier to integrate into dreams than other noises, which could just cause you to wake up or have your sleep otherwise impaired.
The last time I lived in a flat the guy downstairs got up at 6am and used an iPhone. I know that because I could hear his alarm through the floor. Couldn't have been anywhere near 60dB in my room, but it would wake me up every damn time. Oddly, even today I am absurdly sensitive to that awful Apple alarm sound.
Same! I will jump out of my seat if I hear it loud, sleeping or not. If it goes off anywhere on a bus or a plane, I hear it at very low volume. I'm glad they've (since) changed the defaults to less jarring sounds.
why don't more hotels seem to understand this? so often I find that even nice hotels have very minimal background noise but poor soundproofing of the doors. so hallway noise disrupts sleep so much
When hotels buy doors, they optimize for things like cost, fireproofing, and weight (so guests and housecleaning can open them easily). Noise cancelling is a nice-to-have, but if you're buying and maintaining ~100 room doors (USA average per hotel), then you have to cut costs somewhere. On top of that, hotel hallway environments tend to be noisy in the first place. We're talking long, narrow hallways with hard walls, plus constant streams of holidaymakers who aren't exactly tiptoeing around.
Because good materials cost more than "fancy" decorations.
I wake up _super_ easy at many parts of the night, to all kinds of minor sounds. But when I lived directly behind a train, I not only don't recall it waking me up, I distinctly remember that, after getting used to it, it had a kind of calming effect on me. Really interesting. But I wonder if it was still disrupting my sleep and to what degree. I'd mainly like to know in case we have future housing options next to a train because, outside of being near horn / turns, I wouldn't normally worry much about it.
Some days I joke that there should be a set of Nobel prizes for making machines quieter. Categories could include: air-conditioning units and mini-fridges, construction and landscaping equipment, old university buildings, pump-housings, etc. The quality of life of many would be improved if we had quieter machines. It boggles my mind that a) in many hotel rooms one can hear a good deal of machine noise and neighbors' televisions, and b) that some sort of noise score (as calculated from DB meter measurements) isn't more widely available for things like apartment rentals, conference room bookings, etc.
what about a noise tax? my city has some electric buses and some ancient buses - the difference obviously is absolutely huge, but right now the financial incentives aren't there to upgrade the whole fleet
Noise from construction machines is actually a feature. They all have added backup beepers at this point as required per OSHA guidelines. Audible for well over a mile in normal conditions
> Audible for well over a mile in normal conditions
That doesn't strike me as a feature.
Also a solved problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rwJ5NCf1Vw
Tesco delivery trucks have them here in Ireland; it's pretty good stuff. Still quite loud/noticeable when you're up close, while at the same time not being completely obnoxious to everyone in a kilometre radius.
They have to be loud enough to be heard through hearing protection. The amplitude is a feature.
It's a "solved problem" in the sense that nuclear energy is a solved problem. There's no mandate to actually see widespread roll out of anything that may be a better solution.
There's a construction site near me at present. There is always 1 machine in reverse, at all times. The utility of having a backup beeper or any noise making device on that site is thus zero. It is the single largest source of noise pollution, larger than the roadway
>The utility of having a backup beeper or any noise making device on that site is thus zero.
This strikes me as an odd take, maybe from someone who has never worked on a construction site.
Our auditory sense is more than just a binary “present/not present” detection. We can sense distance and direction. Just because there is a backup beeper somewhere on site does not mean there is no value to any other auditory signal.
Think about when you’re in a congested city. There’s probably a lot of ambient car noise, including horns, in the background. That doesn’t mean you’re unable to react to a honking car in your immediate vicinity.
You just believe you can sense the direction of loud noises in urban environments. Our nervous system has no "404 not found" for positional awareness. Even after severe head trauma, you have a sense of position for everything. It's so wrong as to be useless, but you have it.
Ask anyone who's been at a shooting in a city. Everyone gives a different answer for where the shooter was at. It's such a severe issue the US Army has microphone arrays they equip urban combat vehicles with. Even with bullets actually bouncing off the armor the troops cannot accurately locate the direction of the shooter(s).
As the other poster mentioned, the characteristics of sound matter. That’s why the report of a firearm is a bad example.
But there are more commonplace examples. Older phone ringtones are often hard for people to locate, but nearly everybody can pinpoint the sound of a dropped coin. Sound perception is more complex than just perception of pressure levels. To the point above, you wouldn’t confuse a car honking in front of you with one behind you even in the presence of ambiguous ambient noise.
Bullets are a bad example because they have multiple properties which makes them much harder to localise than many other sounds.
I'm pretty sure most people can localise a vehicle emitting broadband noise (engine or white reversing sound) in the conditions that matter.
> They have to be loud enough to be heard through hearing protection.
It's kind of a nit-pick, but this is not really true.
Very approximately, you will perceive a sound if it is above your threshold of hearing, and also not masked by other sounds.
If you're wearing the best ear defenders which attenuate all sounds by about 30dB, and you assume your threshold of hearing is 10dBSPL (conservative), any sound above 40dBSPL is above the threshold of hearing. That's the level of a quiet conversation.
And because your ear defenders attenuate all sounds, masking is not really affected -- the sounds which would be masking the reversing beepers are also quieter.
There are nuances of course (hearing damage, and all the complicated effects that wearing ear defenders cause), but none of them are to the point that loud reversing noises are required because of hearing protection -- they are required to be heard over all the other loud noises on a construction site.
> The utility of having a backup beeper or any noise making device on that site is thus zero.
The inverse square law says otherwise; on site the distances will be much more apparent.
Those beepers should be directional. I don't need to hear the beep opposite the direction of movement.
The requirements are that it be heard in all directions, including straight up.
https://www.quietmark.com/
> making machines quieter
It's already possible, just not profitable.
Exactly. That’s where the other comment about a “noise tax”, or enact fines for exceeding limits, are probably necessary to shift the calculus.
Japan is a good case study [1]. If nothing else, it’s fun to look at the charts showing noise reductions—not just in aggregate, but for each contributing input (e.g. engine, intake, exhaust, tires, cooling)—for both passenger vehicles and heavy equipment. Unfortunately, in the US, we have a few obstacles to legislation like this, least of which being public apathy as majority of voters who are not exposed to high sound levels daily.
“Japan's primary legislation governing noise regulation is the Environmental Noise Regulation Act, first introduced in 1986 and subsequently amended in 1999. This act sets different noise limits for different times of the day, with the maximum allowable noise level during the day set at 55 decibels and reduced to 45 decibels at night to prevent disturbances to those who are sleeping. Violators of these standards are subject to penalties.”
[1] https://www.lios-group.com/news/noise-regulations-in-japan-o...
Would love to know what kind of noise and sound level was used for this test. Was it a continuous monotonous noise (such as white/pink/brown noise) at a fixed volume? Or was it some random noise that would "pop-up" randomly?
Does anyone know?
I would imagine that a noise that would randomly "pop-up" would be worse. But would be curious if that's not the case.
That's also what I was wondering- I sleep with a fan on for the white noise, otherwise I sleep very poorly if at all. I wonder if that sort of 'covers up' the spikes in noise you'd be hearing if the room were otherwise silent
This was ambient noise in the room, as measured by an Apple Watch. So “random,” real world noises that pop up, as opposed to a controlled level of white noise.
+1 also thought about this.
Something like the variability of noise (eg, maybe figure out the 25th percentile dbs across the night, and then count the spikes above that? or maybe count the number of times the slope goes above a certain value indicating sharp rises in volume that would disturb someone?)
I also would love to simply see the data based on the average of "N loudest moment(s)" during the sleep. eg: treat the dbs score for that night as the average of the N loudest moments over the night, and plot a series of graphs that show various values of N. (or make it 3d, but i've found many folks are not capable of reading those kinds of graphs)
I've been using earplugs practically every night for the past three years and I can't recommend them enough. While the particular kind I use (Mack's ultra soft) don't block out all the noise, there is a wide variety of noises that used to wake me up which don't anymore. If you haven't tried them I would highly recommend giving sleeping with earplugs a shot. It only takes a few days or so to get used to them.
In terms of downsides, only once in the past three years did I get some earwax clogged in some part of my ear which was easy to remove with some special spray (went to urgent care). Also, I have a very hard time sleeping without them anymore so I always make sure to have a pair at hand. Also, you may have to experiment with various brands and types as some brands are really uncomfortable and hurt my ear.
3M 1100 work great for me. You can get a box of 200 pairs
Unfortunately they changed a bit the past few years to be slightly less comfortable but I still find them the best overall
Foam are significantly less comfortable for side sleeping and block less noise than Silicone (Mack's) which still come in large sets for well under $1/pair.
I don't know about the 1100 but I have another model (ear classic), just simple foam earplugs, of the same manufacturer. Having gone through many different foam, silicon etc plugs from the pharmacy and grocery shop, the 3M are undeniably the best I've ever had. No pain from the foam expanding bigger than the ear canal (although it's initially bigger), no itching from sweat etc, no pressure on the eardrum when side-sleeping (that tinnitus feeling from some foam earplugs). They are literally perfect, and the noise blocking is the best I've experienced. I don't know what it is but perhaps they have some foam patented that only they use (probably poisonous or something in true evil company fashion though)
The only reason I tried them is that I found myself in a situation where my standard silicone earplugs were gone and where somebody gave me a box of hundreds of earplugs they didn't manage to sell at a concert. I was bracing myself for a terrible night of ear pain, but was pleasantly surprised of how superior they were to anything I had tried, still using earplugs from the very same box as my night-to-night noise relief
I use EAR Classics too. I sleep on a dense pillow, so when there's some noise outside/near the apartment I lay down on the side and put in the earplug into the "top" ear so that the other/bottom ear is then blocked by the pillow. If I change my position during sleep, the noise is usually gone by then (also I tend to be bothered less by noise if I'm already asleep). This is because for some reason I generally sleep better when my ears aren't covered.
Ear plugs are highly personal I find. People need to find what works for them. I can't stand wax or silicone earplugs for example. I sleep on my side
That’s all great until something happens while you are sleeping that needs your attention. I’d love to be able to use something like that but being responsible for my family’s safety says I cannot.
Maybe there is room for a device that recognizes those types of sounds and maybe triggers a watch vibration would be a solution.
That's a valid point. Alarms of all sorts do still wake me up, along with crying babies. It worked well when my wife and I were taking shifts being with the baby. When it was my turn to rest, using earplugs definitely made my sleep time more effective.
I've been having issues sleeping lately, and a few days ago, the flat below us started demolishing walls at 8am. This has been going on for a week, and I've never slept better. It sounds like they're demolishing the floor I'm sleeping on, but somehow I can just ignore it and sleep soundly, whereas normally I wake up with the smallest sound, like a dog barking outside my soundproof windows.
Very odd.
Maybe record it for an hour or so. Then after the construction stops you can play it back as “soothing” sleep noise. ;)
That's like Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinny where he stays overnight in a cabin and wakes up and freaks out at every little noise, but when he's held in contempt and there's a prison riot going on, he's sleeping like a baby.
I can't tell you what sirens outside do to my sleep, but I can tell you they can be very agitating when I'm trying to fall asleep.
It's funny though how during the recent heat dome I could barely sleep after sealing the windows cause of just how dang quiet it was!
Fickle mistress sleep be.
Wonder if white noise counts as noise from this perspective. Or if it’s mainly unexpected noises that make sleep quality worse.
In many animals, hearing gets less sensitive in general when they sleep. I think it's common for people to be surprised by that, but it works that way to maximize sleep function.
Dog's are thought to be an exception, because part of their domestication involved selection for the offspring that was more alert (watch dogs).
The brain is thought to be hyper sensitive to a certain subset of sounds while sleeping, such as babies crying.
White noise is thought to work by drowning out the sounds we are most sensitive to.
I didn't see a link to the paper, so can only assume they were introducing new noises at randomized decibel levels to study participants.
My start-up uses sound to enhance sleep's restorative function. So blankly saying "noise at decibel level x disrupts sleep" is not true.
Over the last 10 years, research has shown that precisely timed micro-auditory stimulations increase slow-wave activity, and accompanying biomarkers of health. There are now more than 50 published peer-reviewed papers regarding this phenomenon. We link to some of these on our website https://affectablesleep.com
Environmental noise is different than precise stimulation based noise, but most of us have an adaptation level to environmental noise.
I remember when I first moved to Chile having dinner with an Argentinian and an Indian, and the Argentinian said the streets in Santiago were so loud it was important to get an apartment on a higher floor. The Indian guy looked around and was like "what noise"? To him, Santiago was a peaceful and quiet environment.
I have even worse noise in my area — a widespread ground vibration across a few kilometers, like a constant loud 50Hz hum that causes a tingling sensation in my body. You can’t even block it by covering your ears. I've been experiencing this frequently, both thru the night and during the day, for the past five years here in Singapore has affected my sleep rhythm, can't sleep with that noise. I've unemployed for the past 5 years.
Low frequency noise is the worst! Probably a stupid question but do you know anyone else that can hear it? I had a low-frequency version of tinnitus and I spent weeks thinking it was some external noise
My mum hears it too, but the local authorities simply claimed they couldn't hear anything during that brief moment. They’d have to stay overnight to really hear and feel it — inside a room, not just in a public space. It even vibrate my eardrum like I'm sitting on an F16 pilot seat.
I don't hear it in other districts.
I wish there were an expert or researcher interested in these areas: residential buildings, shops, parks, churches, and schools.
I wish there were an expert or researcher interested in these areas: residential buildings, shops, parks, churches, and schools.
You mean an expert in acoustics related to those areas? There are lots of experts and researchers. Take a look at the Acoustical Society of America, the Institute of Noise Control Engineering, and Council for Accreditation in Occupational Hearing Conservation for starters.
Penn State, University of Hartford, Purdue University, Michigan Technological University, University of Nebraska, Morgan State Univeristy, and Brigham Young University (among others) all have strong acoustics programs with research in a bunch of areas.
Oh, but I'm in Singapore.
https://acousticssingapore.com might have some leads.
Thank you!
That might make you want to look at that list of organizations and then seek similar organizations or schools in Singapore, if you didn't already try. Good luck with the hum.
Thank you!
i’d try getting this in front of a journalist or news station. They may be more excited to investigate “weird” claims like this one. Sorry to hear about your situation.
I tried by emailing to them and got no respond.
That sounds terrible.
I am imagining some kind of vibration dampening layer under a bed, with an acoustic foam shell around/over the bed.
Drastic measures might be worth trying.
That could be hard — my building is vibrating as well. It might be due to major underground train construction. The authorities either couldn’t pinpoint the source of the noise or just claim they don’t hear it.
I wish someone could solve the problem at the receiver end, i.e., invent noise-cancelling headphones/earplugs that actually cancel noise as effectively as eye-masks cancel light.
In addition to sleep needs, the world has gotten noisier now that people are habitually using speakerphones in public in the most obnoxious ways.
I used to use mouldable silicone ear plugs :
https://bioears.co.uk/products/bioears-ear-plugs
Very effective, but eventually they made me just focus on my tinnitus.
I now live in a quieter place and use some white noise from a speaker - ocean sounds.
These are the most comfortable earplugs I've used:
https://www.elacin.com/your-perfect-fit/leisure/relax-sleep/
Currently I use Ozlo Sleepbuds which are not quite as comfortable and a little finicky to operate, but I like the masking noise.
I mean....
https://westone.com/defendear-sleep
Gets you some pretty good quiet for sleep. It's not active noise cancelling, but they work pretty well.
Anecdotally if you wear a pair of westone solids, and then a pair of earmuffs on top of that, you are basically just hearing through your bones, which can't be avoided (with passive or active).
Interesting! It could be a confounder as well. For example, maybe people who live in dense (loud) urban dwellings also tend to have more day-to-day life stress generally, leading to reduced sleep quality. (Of course, reduced sleep quality could also be a source of more life stress...)
Would your userbase be up for a little experiment: adding white/pink/rainfall/etc noise at various volumes? I bet you'd see an inverted U shaped curve, with sleep quality increasing at relatively low volume levels, and then hitting some maximum and decreasing when it gets too loud! (Agree with other comments about looking at intra-night variance in noise level.)
I haven’t seen it mentioned, but a few extra sleep hacks I have learned: - I use the chili-sleep to control temperature. - I use sleep headphones to drift to sleep to a story. If I wake up ruminating, I turn the headphones back on and it helps break the cycle. - Sleep socks. I sleep with socks on.
The worst is this a "fashion" of modifying vehicles, illegally, to make them sound like airplanes. I live in Sweden and, believe me, it is absolute hell on hearth.
Low frequency noise is the worst. Extremely difficult often impossible to eliminate without a lot of expense. Travels long distances. Absolute nightmare for people sensitive to noise
I wish they’d make car alarms illegal. afaict they do nothing. no one looks. It does not stop car theft or breakins. all it does ruin everyone’s sleep.
Especially in 2025, if you want to know if your car is being whatever triggers an alarm then have it send you a message that only bothers you and not several hundred other people.
There is your new startup idea for ycombinator. car alarm app with optional $$$ track down service :p
> threshold effect: keeping bedroom sound levels beneath the low-60s dB (roughly the volume of normal conversation)
A common source matching this description would be having a TV on in the bedroom.
I find this hard to believe this is universally true. I sleep much worse without noise. I use a fan or a speaker to add noise to the room. If I don't, I wake up constantly.
That could be because your added noise is masking other noise with worse effects.
White noise and wave sounds != A motorcycle with the loudest exhaust imaginable blasting by your house going 100mph at 3am
This is an interesting hypotheses—I think we could test it by looking at intra-night variance in noise. I’ll try to do a follow up!
My apartment is along a corridor that is frequented by emergency vehicles, so sirens are frequent during normal sleep hours, and my apartment windows face the sunrise. I've adopted a number of things over the years to combat all of this:
- Blackout curtains
- Earplugs
- White noise maker (just an air purifier but it does the same thing)
- 3mg Melatonin
Advertorial w/ PG name-drop.
FWIW - my anecdata - I have been experimenting with noise cancelling headphones at night and I feel like it's improving my sleep.
Incredibly, the noise insulation between floors and ESPECIALLY walls in both hotels around the world and even expensive, modern apartment buildings in Manhattan is absolutely atrocious. So I end up booking Airbnb's when I travel and renting top floors whenever I can.
I find the build quality of new buildings (again, even uber luxury apartment condos) in the U.S. absolutely crap compared to Europe (I'm thinking especially of France and Germany).
Over here on HN you have a strong contingent of people who push pro-density, pro-city, and anti-car. But some people (like myself) who suffer from a sensitive sleep are deeply affected and consider moving to the woods away from people just for this problem. I find the 'SLAM' sound of doors (in New York there's a spring loading per building code), the stomp stomp of upstairs, and the bass music of adjacent neighbors to be deeply disruptive from a psychological perspective.
Ask an inmate:
https://amp.sacbee.com/news/california/article240396741.html
EDIT/TLDR: highly effective
There might be some other factors in that situation that prevent one from having a restful night.
Might be! And some people might not deserve sleep! But
seems to be the specific relevant factor."Stanford University sleep medicine professor who says in a court-filed declaration that Lipsey “is exposed to unrelenting noise that is out of his control that can further (fuel) his insomnia and potentially worsens his health.”
I'm using pink noise to suppress my REM phase and get more deep sleep when my body needs extra regeneration at the expense of mental regeneration. Luckily there's none of that random street noise in my neighborhood.
So just use some good quality earplugs?
I personally would not be able to sleep well with earplugs. The feeling of pressure in my ears, combined with the 'pushing' of the earplug if I rolled over to lay on my side would be very uncomfortable.
Try “3M earplugs yellow” on amazon. They are pretty much fully immersed in the ear (for me), and the insulation is very good. The pressure - yeah it took maybe a few days to get used to, but…
The effects for me (living in Brussels city centre, so quite noisy - police, ambulance, sometimes loud tourists past midnight, and a bit of construction at 6am nearby to keep it real :-) ) were very pronounced:
From needing 9 hours and feeling groggy in the mornings anyway, to easily going on 7-8, feeling very refreshed and alert each day.
A cool side effect was that this superpower works also while traveling - so, I no longer care how noisy the airco is in the hotel room, being next to the lift, or having the window above the lively bar.
The only downside with those earplugs that they are good maybe for 3-4 nights and then are too squished to be useful; but the upsides more than make it up for me.
I've tried the squishy foam earplugs, and they always fall out. Other suggestions, such as silicone and custom earplugs, are something I'm going to try. Let's see if they help.
However, what destroys my sleep is the light from early morning, streetlights, and the neighbor's porch light. Unfortunately, our bedroom faces southeast and features French doors that open onto an east-facing three-season porch, allowing sunlight to stream in. Yeah, I've got curtains everywhere, and I have room-darkening curtains on order. If those don't work, the next step is putting solar panels over my bedroom windows. I figure if I'm going to keep light out, I might as well put it to work some other way.
As an experiment, I'm using my car camping mattress in my office, which is the quietest room in the house, and I'm blocking the light from the windows with curtains and cardboard. So far, it's the best sleep I've had in years. There's a bit of domestic disharmony now, but hopefully my partner and I can work out a compromise on light-blocking curtains and keeping them fucking shut.
Have you tried a blackout sleep mask? I had to try a few to find one which consistently stays in place overnight and doesn't put any pressure on my eyes, but once I found one it solved all light-related problems for me.
I've tried them, and they don't work for me. They trigger a bit of claustrophobia. I sleep with a full-face CPAP mask, and I'm not sure I can take anything more strapped to my face.
My wife started snoring pretty badly while she was pregnant so ended up buying these earplugs https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPH7HNT1. I've never been able to sleep in the foam earplugs as they either fall out or the pressure starts to really irritate after a while, but these don't put pressure and they stay in all night. They're also really block out noise.
Thanks, adding them to the list of things to try
These custom earplugs are the most comfortable I've ever worn:
https://www.elacin.com/your-perfect-fit/leisure/relax-sleep/
Nice. Which model do you use? And do they sell them in the U.S.? Not that I would mind making a trip overseas and getting away from the insanity here for a little while, but it adds to the cost.
I have the "Relax & Sleep" pair. I got mine from a Finnish reseller, and thought they were a global company but they seem to list only European locations. I believe thomann.de delivers to the U.S., but that's little help since the point of these would be to get them made individually.
I would assume that your local audiologist or music instrument store will know what the U.S. equivalent to these is. It seems to me that Elacin's biggest market is musicians who want a comfortable pair of earplugs with a flat frequency response.
It's rare for me to encounter another Belgian on HN but I'll definitely try this. Sleeping roadside till i have my upper floor renovated has been a disaster for my sleep and functioning.
I've found success with silicon plugs, typically marketed at swimmers. They're like little balls of soft material that you roll up and squish over the entrance, without inserting into the ear. They lay pretty flat and I can sleep on my side with them in. Now that my third neighbor in a row has acquired the loudest, most constantly barking outdoor dog imaginable, I functionally cannot sleep without them.
This was my experience until I purchased custom molded earplugs a year ago. It's one of the best purchases I've made. They're superior to off-the-shelf plugs in many ways:
1. They don't fall out, because they "hook into" the shape of your ear.
2. They sit much closer to the inner ear, so they feel invisible when side-sleeping.
3. It's a perfect fit every time, so you don't have to worry about noise leakage or discomfort caused by pressure.
If you don't want to spend $200 on a pair of plugs from an audiologist (I'd strongly urge you to reconsider!), the best off-the-shelf alternative for me was silicone plugs. To solve the side-sleeping problem with silicone plugs, you can tear them in half or use children's versions depending on your ear canal size.
+1 to "get custom molded earplugs"
If enjoy and pay to see live music, you should spring for a set of "musician's earplugs". They're molded just like safety/sleeping earplugs, but they use a flat 10-15dB attenuating filter. They make the music quieter without distorting it.
Symphony players wear them because brass/percussion is loud enough to cause hearing damage with hours of exposure. I've sung in mine for Easter morning services where I was wedged between a celebratory trumpet and an organ with all the stops out.
They're not cheap, but they're not very expensive in the world of Ticketmaster fees.
I’ve found that I need to use low profile earbuds (max rock) with brown noise to both block sounds and mask them. It’s helped a ton for sleep quality.
Having ear plugs in for that long feels like an ice pick digging into my skull. Don't know about anyone else.
I've never found ear plugs which are comfortable inside my ear canal for more than a few hours (including some extra-small child ones), but the silicone ones which cover the opening rather than being inserted into the ear work well for me. They don't block sound as well but it's still a very noticeable difference.
Probably a size issue. I had earplugs that were too big that start hurting after a while. I’ve since found smaller ones that work perfectly.
I prefer the ear-muff style circumaural ones. I have to wear hearing protection frequently at work and have several pairs of Pro-For-Sho muffs.
Even really cheap foam ones make a massive difference. They go iffy after a couple nights though
thoughts on the safety of that wrt firealarms / home security?
Also similarly for parents? (kids/baby crying)
I've mostly been YOLOing it so far, but worry that once I'm not single (no kids) it won't be acceptable.
Having been using earplugs sleeping for the past three years, you will definitely hear things like alarms. Even our babies crying will consistently wake me up. With our baby, when it was my time to rest, having earplugs made a huge difference in terms of sleep quality.
I think you'll still hear any relevant alarms. Earplugs are better than nothing, but really aren't fabulous at blocking noise the way eye-masks are.
For hearing-impaired people, there are alarms based on flashing and vibration which you could look into if it's a concern.
While in the subject of noise, I'd like some research on the effect of "popcorn" tuned car exhausts on the mental health of people suffering from PTSD or are just generally sensitive.
I find it fascinating that as a society, we allowed automobiles to pass close to homes
I'm glad we are finally going to transition to EVs.. about time
Unfortunately even without engine noise people will still install gigantic subwoofers in their car and roll around rattling windows. This has consistently been the biggest problem with my sleep for years, and nothing I've been able to do (including trying to move to different locations) has helped because they are so incredibly loud and prevalent these days.
I bought an apartment next to a cycling path that connects the area to the city centre and that was singlehandedly the biggest mistake of my life, because the path also allows mopeds, which have engines orders of magnitude louder than loudest cars. This is insanity. Thankfully, the city is planning to ban fossil-fuel mopeds within five years. They already started phasing them out, you can't register a new one, only old ones are allowed. These are going to be five very long years though.
Also, it's a mostly black area, which means people hanging out and talking right in front of the apartment building, even though there's a public park five minutes of walk away. When I was searching for an apartment to buy, there was one on tenth floor, and I regret not buying that one, because I'd be shielded from all the noise on the street.
I was fully conviced that I'd be able to stomach living in poorer area and wait for gentrification to happen. I can live with trash on the street. I can live with vandalism. I can live with beggars by the supermarket. I can live with theft and other crime. But the noise. The noise is fucking unbearable.
My dream is to wait until the apartment doubles or triples in value, then sell it, and move to rural shithole where nobody lives.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/09/let-bro...
didn't you get the memo that wanting peace and quiet is racist and classist now?
1. Diversity and inclusivity does not work. People segregate themselves into groups because it's easier for them to communicate. White people will always prefer to hang out with other white people, and black people will always prefer to hang out with other black people. This is clearly visible in my city - all the black people are concentrated in a ghetto, and on the street you never see mixed-race groups. Similarly, at work when I go for lunch I notice that people tend to gravitate towards same or similar nationalities.
2. I am a full-blown classist and I see no problem with that. I grew up in a small village and everyone who escaped poverty hates poor people.
At a distance, most of the noise from a car is road noise, not engine noise.
Yeah, it is sad to think how different things could have been, especially when you consider how loud/dangerous/toxic early cars were.
On the other hand, before that, we (humans) allowed horses to shit (and decompose) in the streets, and long before that, we invited livestock to spend the winter in the same room. So the past wasn't idyllically clean or well organized either.
FYI a literature review from a deep research AI ======
The effect of noise on sleep is multifaceted, involving various types of noise exposure, physiological mechanisms, and consequences on sleep quality and health.
I. Introduction Environmental and occupational noise refers to unwanted or harmful sounds from sources such as traffic, aircraft, railways, and workplaces. Noise pollution is a significant public health issue due to its widespread prevalence and impact on sleep and overall health.
II. Types of Noise Exposure
Environmental noise includes road traffic, aircraft, and railway noise. Aircraft noise, for example, has been shown to negatively affect sleep in children, whereas road traffic noise may have less impact on autonomic activity during sleep [Effect of Noise on Sleep and Autonomic Activity in Children]. Occupational noise exposure also contributes to sleep disturbances and has been linked to sleep loss and fragmentation [The effects of occupational noise on sleep]. Intentional masking noise such as white or pink noise is sometimes used as a sleep aid to improve sleep quality in noisy environments [The effects of white noise on sleep].
III. Physiological Mechanisms During sleep, the auditory system continues to process sounds, and noise can lower arousal thresholds, causing awakenings or micro-arousals. Noise exposure activates the autonomic nervous system, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, and stimulates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, leading to hormonal and metabolic changes [Environmental noise and sleep disturbances].
IV. Effects on Sleep Architecture Noise exposure reduces total sleep time and sleep efficiency, increases sleep fragmentation, and causes more frequent micro-arousals. It also alters sleep stages by decreasing deep sleep (slow-wave sleep) and REM sleep, which are critical for restorative sleep [Effects of environmental noise on sleep].
V. Health and Daytime Consequences Poor sleep due to noise leads to daytime sleepiness, cognitive impairments, and mood disturbances. Chronic noise-related sleep disruption is associated with increased cardiovascular and metabolic risks, such as hypertension and glucose metabolism disturbances. It also negatively affects quality of life and can contribute to burnout [Environmental Noise and Effects on Sleep], [Effects of personal noise exposure, sleep quality, and burnout].
VI. Vulnerable and Special Populations Children are particularly sensitive to noise, with aircraft noise shown to disrupt their sleep more than road traffic noise. Older adults and individuals with pre-existing sleep disorders are also more vulnerable to noise-induced sleep disturbances [Effect of Noise on Sleep and Autonomic Activity in Children].
VII. Noise as a Sleep Aid Paradoxically, steady background noise such as white or pink noise can improve sleep quality by masking disruptive environmental sounds. Studies have shown that white noise can significantly enhance subjective and objective sleep measures in noisy urban settings. However, potential downsides include hearing damage and psychological dependency on noise for sleep [Noise as a sleep aid: A systematic review], [The effects of white noise on sleep].
VIII. Mitigation and Future Directions Effective strategies to mitigate noise effects on sleep include engineering controls like soundproofing, use of earplugs, and regulatory noise limits. Behavioral interventions and public health policies are also important. Future research is needed to clarify long-term effects, dose-response relationships, and to develop personalized interventions [The Effect of Room Acoustics on the Sleep Quality of Healthy Sleepers].
In summary, noise negatively impacts sleep by disrupting sleep architecture and triggering physiological stress responses, leading to adverse health outcomes. While some forms of noise can aid sleep by masking disturbances, overall noise reduction remains critical for improving sleep quality and health.
References
Environmental noise and sleep disturbances: A threat to health? Demian Halperin et al. Sleep Science, 2014 Nov 15. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4608916/ Poor sleep causes measurable changes on these systems. Experimental studies demonstrated that both sleep restriction and poor quality sleep affect glucose ...
Effects of environmental noise on sleep Kenneth I Hume et al. Noise & health, 2012. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23257581/ This paper summarizes the findings from the past 3 year's research on the effects of environmental noise on sleep and identifies key future research goals.
The Effect of Room Acoustics on the Sleep Quality of Healthy Sleepers Ingo Fietze et al. Noise & Health, 2016 Sep-Oct. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5187651/ Noise is one of the factors that can seriously disturb sleep, and sound volume is an important factor in this context. One strategy involves avoiding ...
Noise as a sleep aid: A systematic review Samantha M. Riedy et al. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2021/02/01. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10870... ... sleep aid, especially since it may also negatively affect sleep and hearing. ... Suzuki et al. Sleep deepening effect of steady pink noise. J Sound Vib. (1991).
Environmental Noise and Effects on Sleep: An Update to the WHO Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Michael G Smith et al. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2022 Jul 11. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9272916/ Jul 11, 2022 ... To what extent have the following outcomes of railway noise occurred in the past 12 months? Railway noise disturbs when falling asleep. Not ...
Effects of personal noise exposure, sleep quality, and burnout on quality of life: An online participation cohort study in Taiwan Ta-Chien Chan et al. Science of The Total Environment, 2024/03/10. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972... Mar 10, 2024 ... To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the pathways through which daily noise exposure, sleep quality, and personal burnout affect ...
Effect of Noise on Sleep and Autonomic Activity in Children according to Source https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8476937/ Road traffic noise did not significantly alter sleep or autonomic activity in children, whereas aircraft noise exerted a negative effect on sleep.
The effects of occupational noise on sleep: A systematic review Saeid Yazdanirad et al. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2023/12/01. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10870... One of the important effects due to noise exposure is sleep loss/disturbance, which has received less attention. Sleep disturbance is defined as problems with ...
The effects of white noise on sleep and duration in individuals living in a high noise environment in New York City Matthew R Ebben et al. Sleep medicine, 2021/7. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34049045/ Our data show that white noise significantly improved sleep based on subjective and objective measurements in subjects complaining of difficulty sleeping.
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