New-age sleep aids make slumber sweet

Legendary funny-man W.C. Fields probably said it best: “The best cure for insomnia is to get lots of sleep.” But anyone who has suffered with insomnia or even the occasional restless night knows that starring wide-eyed at the ceiling or alarm clock is far from a comedic event.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, adults (ages 18 and up) need between seven and nine hours of sleep each night. However, the average adult is reportedly only getting between five and a half to seven hours each night. While that loss of two to three hours of optimal time zonked out might not sound like much, a lack of sleep – even just a few hours over the course of a week – doesn’t come without some serious side effects.

Increases in motor vehicle accidents, increased risk of diabetes and heart problems, increased risk for psychiatric conditions including depression and substance abuse and a decreased ability to pay attention, react to signals or remember new information are all symptoms of shortened sleep durations. In fact, a study recently completed at the University of Colorado has shown that losing a couple of hours of sleep for a few nights in a row can lead to an immediate weight gain. Gasp!

While the reported cases of insomnia are relatively high in the U.S. (at 30 percent of the adult population), what is more staggering is that 62 percent of the adult population in the U.S. reports that they experience “sleep problems” a few nights per week.

Pharmacology hasn’t missed this trend in lack-luster sleep quality and duration, and as a result, offers an array of pills and potions to help send you off to dreamland. Unfortunately, a trip to “dreamland” might include climbing into one’s automobile and driving a couple of hundred miles before waking up and finding yourself parked backwards at a McDonald’s drive-through window.

There could be a multitude of issues that affect the quantity and quality of sleep you get each night – bills and debt, work-related stress, a serious cocaine addiction – who knows? But one thing I know for sure is that you have to have a decent environment in which you can drift off into sweet slumber.

Sound is huge when it comes to sleep; a yipping dog, excessive street noise or a snoring partner can destroy an otherwise perfect sleeping environment. The key is control over the sounds you might want to experience and those that you definitely don’t want to experience.

Of course the quick and easy way to get control over your personal sleeping soundscape is to simply mask the bad sounds with the good sounds. For years I would tune my bedside radio to the local public radio station and drift off to the sweet sounds of obscure Electronica and then rise in the morning to equally obscure news stories read by newscasters with English accents. As I would try to recall my dreams and general sleep quality the following morning, I often thought I was in an episode of Doctor Who – weird music, dreamy landscapes and those English accents were all I could seem to remember.

The next step up from the radio is a sound generator. Sound generators come in a variety of shapes, sizes and functions; from the simple white noise generator (think static on a radio) that just mask environmental noise to the very complex binaural entraining systems that attempt to actually set and control your brainwaves (not quite as scary as it sounds).

White-noise generators, like the SleepMate (www.marpac.com), produce a sound that is similar to the static that is produced by a radio when you aren’t tuned to a particular station. They are typically used to mask unwanted sounds. In fact, most active noise-cancelling headphones actually use white noise to reduce environmental noise from overpowering the intended sound.

A step up from the simple white-noise generator is a true sound machine, like the Sound+Sleep Machine (www.soundofsleep.com). This device, and others like it, basically provide the same functionality of masking unwanted sounds like the white-noise generator, but do it in a more eloquent manner. These devices will allow you to choose from a number of different sounds and soundscapes, for example, rainstorm, crackling fire, ocean waves or a meadow. You’ve probably experienced these devices at some of the mid-level hotel chains. They are a staple to the business traveler’s sleep regimen.

For me, simpler is better when it comes to these devices – too many choices in sound means I add an additional layer of stress to my day as I try to unwind; too many functionality choices like timers and alarms render the device useless when they stop working properly. I actually took the poor man’s route with this type of device and just set up a fan on my nightstand. The steady and constant whoosh of air and hum of the electric motor provides a great mask of environmental noise.

The next level up is binaural beats/brain entrainment devices. These devices attempt to synchronize your brainwaves through sound and shift them into patterns that support a particular activity – sleep being one of those activities.

The concept is fairly simple to explain: if a sound of a particular frequency is played consistently into a subject’s ear, that subject’s brainwaves will eventually begin to mimic, or entrain, to that frequency. This entrainment of the brain can manifest itself physically in the body – heart rate, circulatory and respiration fluctuations, sharpening or dulling of the sense of awareness among others. This is evidenced by the shrill sound of an alarm immediately putting your entire body on full alert, or the drone of the highway beneath the tires on your car lulling your passengers to sleep.

The only problem with brain entrainment is that the frequencies that are typically associated with brain function, and especially those with regard to sleep, fall to the low end of and off the chart for audible sound – the human ear just can’t hear them in their natural form. That is where binaural beats come into play.

I was first exposed to binaural beats when I played fifth-chair trumpet in the junior-high concert band. My less than prestigious position placed me almost direct center of the orchestra pit. When the conductor would tune the first-chair trumpet on my far left to the first-chair French horn on my far right, I would catch that strange oscillating tone as they slowly came into tune with each other. What I was experiencing, I would learn years later, was a binaural tone. My brain would hear the tone in my left ear, let’s say 440 hertz and the tone in my right ear, let’s say 442 Hz, and actually process the difference between the two: 2 Hz, a completely inaudible tone.

At its basic level, a binaural tone or beat is the phenomenon of the brain hearing an inaudible third tone, which is itself the difference of two independent tones, each being played into the ears of the listener.

There was a time in the not so distant past where you could shell out a couple of hundred to a few thousand dollars for devices and/or software that would allow you to customize the binaural beats you wanted to entrain your brain to. Thankfully, smartphone apps have come to the rescue once again.

A quick search of any of the app stores will return numerous entrainment apps but from personal discovery, I can and will recommend two.

If sleep is your primary goal then Pzizz Sleep is what you are looking for. At the time of this writing, Pzizz is going through some management changes which, in turn, is having a slight effect on support and product updates, but you can still download and use the current app.

Pzizz Sleep plays a soothing soundtrack that is layered with binaural beats, among other things, to help lull you to sleep. What makes Pzizz Sleep different is the developer’s claim that a unique soundtrack is created each time you use the app – despite the fact that it appears to sound exactly the same each time you play it. Apparently there are some subtle changes that get made that only the brain can actually detect and interpret – much like the binaural beat itself. What I like about Pzizz Sleep is that it is simple and effective – I throw on my SleepPhones (www.sleepphones.com), a must for listening to anything in bed – fire up the app and lose consciousness somewhere within five minutes.

If you are looking for sleep help but are also interested in experimenting with binaural beats for the waking brain, then try out the collection of apps from Telsa Software LLC. Its AmbiScience line of apps give you scores of binaural beat applications from deep sleep to enhanced concentration to pain relief. The one thing I love about AmbiScience is the absolutely rich musical tracks that they use with their binaural beats. I’ve been using AmbiScience for almost five years now and until Pzizz came along, used it almost every night. I still use it on a very regular basis for the simple reason that it works for me.

Like I stated earlier, the reasons you can’t sleep at night can be innumerable, but by creating a relaxing, soothing environment you will be on your way to having a restful night’s sleep, and having some control over the sound in that environment can make all the difference in the world.

Until next time: Cogito. Lego. Diligo.

Michael D. Wailes is an Interactive Developer at Burns Marketing and Communications in Johnstown. If you have questions or would like to suggest a topic for a future Geek Chic column, email him at news@ncbr.com.

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