#SOUND MACHINE NOISE GENERATOR#

“The main concern to overcome in poor sleep is the busy or racing mind. “Even the idea is a very limited one conceptually,” he said. You probably want to have a period where the auditory system can wind down, regenerate and prepare for the next wake period.”Ĭolin Espie, a professor of sleep medicine at the University of Oxford, agrees the research quality of studies on continuous noise and sleep is poor. “It is an active process, which generates metabolites, some of which have been shown to be harmful to the inner ear. “Whenever we’re exposed to sounds and noise, the inner ear is translating that into nerve signals that are then interpreted by the brain,” he said. He is also concerned about the potential ill-effects of not allowing the auditory system to switch off overnight, although this also has not yet been tested. “I wouldn’t broadly recommend them, because there is no evidence that they are actually working.” But because there may be negative consequences, I would just be careful,” said Basner, whose research has been published in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews.

“If these apps or devices could only do good things, I wouldn’t really care. Although there was some evidence that continuous noise reduced the amount of time it took individuals to fall asleep, the quality of the evidence was extremely poor, and at least one study suggested the noise may lead to more disrupted sleep. Mathias Basner, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, and colleagues systematically reviewed the scientific literature and identified 38 studies that have investigated noise as a sleep aid. One theory is that they help to drown out other bothersome sounds such as street noise another is that listening to the same sound each night may trigger a kind of Pavlovian response, where people learn to associate it with falling asleep.

#SOUND MACHINE NOISE GENERATOR#

They have been hugely successful – the Bedtime Fan app, available on Apple devices, has had more than 3m downloads, while the Android White Noise Generator has more than 1m.

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