photo by: nuryasmin3

“There is only one thing people like that is good for them; a good night’s sleep” - Edgar Watson Howe

A good night’s sleep is an essential biological need. Without it, you can’t be your best during the day – at work, at home, in the car, or anyplace else.

Our behavior, moods, our ability to make decisions and even our eating habits are hugely affected by the quality and quantity of sleep that we get. Sleep experts recommend eight hours of sleep each night to maintain good sleep health, but in its 2001 Omnibus “Sleep In America” Poll, the U.S. National Sleep Foundation reported that one-third of adults (31%) don’t even get seven hours of sleep per night. The same poll also reported that 22% of respondents said they are so sleepy during the day that it interfered with their daily activities at least a few days every week.

If ignored, sleep problems can also contribute to significant health problems, such as strokes, heart attacks, high blood pressure, clinical depression, diabetes and other serious conditions.

Sleep issues can have a deep impact over an individual’s professional life, personal activities and general well-being.

However, getting a good night’s sleep is easier said than done, the hardest thing to do being right there at the beginning; falling asleep.

“How do people go to sleep? I’m afraid I’ve lost the knack. I might try busting myself smartly over the temple with the nightlight. I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember” - Dorothy Parker

No, no, that’s not it.

White sound and dark light

Research has long shown that soothing, low frequency sounds help many babies to relax and fall asleep more easily. Here’s a secret: adults get put to sleep by them, too.

White noise is a random signal with a flat power spectral density. In its purest form, it is not really noise at all. White noise, which is also known as white sound, is a combination of sound frequencies in equal amounts. Just like a white beam of light is made up of all the colors in the color spectrum, white noise is made up of all the sound frequencies.

The white noise is a very peaceful sound that is instinctively soothing and calming to the ears and minds of humans of all ages.

But pure white noise can’t put too many adults too sleep. If anything, it would probably annoy them. However, if the white noise sound is pulsing, magic happens. Some say that the soothing ability of white noise has to do with what we hear inside of our mother’s uterus - pulsing white/pink noise.

For most people, including me, the best white noise rhythm pattern is that of a hair dryer. It puts me to sleep in no time.

Also, for those who sleep during the night, a no-light environment is necessary. Any light source will require attention from the brain, thus reducing the relaxation level and increasing the time required to fall asleep - and probably reducing the sleep quality.

Free sleeping aids

As the previous heading suggested, two things are needed if one is to fall asleep quickly:

1. Pulsating white noise;
2. Dark light;

Another important factor is the room temperature, which should not be too high or too low (the extremities of your body need to be warm).

Now, I can’t help you with the dark light or the room temperature (you have control over them), but I can provide two soothing mp3s with pulsating white noise. For free of course.

Each is almost one minute long and both of them are loopable so you can repeat them as much as you need to without noticing any gaps (best results with a 1 sec crossfade on repeat). You can download them by clicking on the following link: Hair Dryer sounds.

And if you have a computer in the room you’re sleeping in and want to play the sounds off it, there is a little free application that you need to use. It’s called TVLike Sleep and it will turn off your computer at a predetermined time, so that it won’t run all night uselessly. You can download the application here.

Don’t be afraid to try them

I want you to use one of the two sounds tonight and see the difference. I used the #2 last night and fell asleep in less than 3 minutes. It usually takes me somewhere between 10-12 minutes to fall asleep, so it was almost a 400% time improvement. And it’s not only a time improvement, but a quality improvement as well. I went to sleep at 2am and woke up fresh at 10am; my usual schedule was sleep at 2am and waking up at 1pm.

I hope that these sounds will help you sleep better, or at least that they will be an effective way to wind down and relax. In case they don’t work for you, you will need to find another pulsating rhythm for the white noise - ocean, rain, vacuum cleaner, etc.

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