How Noise Can Impact Your Sleep Cycle

A good night’s sleep is required for more than just feeling or looking a little better. Each stage of sleep is necessary for specific functions of the body and brain, such as restoring muscle mass. However, noises can keep you awake at night and prevent proper sleep, such as:

• Traffic and people outside
• Your household items
• Televisions or radios
• A crying infant
• High or low-pitched sounds like a dripping faucet

Any of these can disturb a specific part of your sleep cycle. And sleep disruption will cause physical and psychological issues. However, it’s also possible you are highly sensitive to sounds. In that case, you should book an appointment with an audiologist as soon as possible.

Disturbing Sounds when Sleeping

Environmental noise is perhaps the most disturbing type of sound, mainly because there is little you can do about it. For example, road traffic, power lines, and trains are highly disturbing sources of noise pollution. Roads, for example, produce around 45 decibels of sound. Much too loud for the 30 decibels, it takes to disturb your sleep. However, not everyone is disturbed by loud noises. But humans are programmed to react to emotional sounds such as a baby crying. Additionally, hearing loss-related tinnitus could cause severe noise, keeping you awake at night.

How to Reduce Noise when You Sleep

Excess sounds can be very stressful for someone experiencing hyperacusis (sound intolerance) or tinnitus. Additionally, the stress of life, such as worries, can exacerbate sleep problems. Therefore, you must make your sleeping areas stress-free. This includes noise and light reduction. Light reduction is a simple case of covering the windows. But reducing sounds is a little more complicated. However, you can try to reduce disturbing noise with safety earplugs, soundproofing mechanisms and sound masking technology that drowns out external noise.

Why You Need All Sleep Stages

During your sleep cycle, every stage performs a critical function. If any is disturbed, you can wake up feeling sluggish and unfocused rather than refreshed and fully prepared for any task. The deepest level of sleep, known as N3, is the most essential part of sleep because it’s where your body repairs tissue, bone, muscle, and your immune system. Although it takes significant sound to arouse from N3, quietness is still needed for it to function correctly. Further, REM sleep does for the mind, what N3 does for the body, and plays a role in memory and cognition.

Your Sleep Stages

When your brain enters sleep mode, there are various stages it goes through in a specific sequence. For example, REM sleep is when you dream. But it also performs another crucial function. It helps store all the events of the day into long-term memory. The stages are:

• Wake: you are drowsy and tired but conscious to begin to reduce Alpha waves.
• N1: Alpha waves become low-amplitude mixed-frequencies for entering a relaxed state.
• N2: heart rate and body temperature drop as you enter delta wave deep sleep.
• N3: deepest delta wave sleep state that causes fatigue if disrupted.
• REM: breathing is erratic as you dream around 90 minutes after falling asleep.

Each stage of sleep performs a much-needed function. While disrupting any one of these is harmful, regular disturbance while you’re at N3 can cause significant mental impairment and is commonly called “brain fog.” However, it takes substantial sound levels to be awoken from N3.

Long-Term Effects of Poor Sleep

The short-term effects of poor sleep are well known, especially if you experience it often. In the short term, you will lose concentration, experience tiredness and aching muscles. However, the long-term effects are severe and adverse. Since your immune system cannot repair appropriately during N3, lack of it will severely weaken you to illnesses like common cold and flu. Physically, you are at a higher risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and weight gain. Psychologically, you could experience memory loss, depression and anxiety.

Treatment for Disturbed Sleep

Although sleep happens to everyone and is an essential part of life, researchers understand little of the mechanisms involved. However, research is ongoing on various treatments available if you experience poor sleep because of noise. In some cases, soundproofing and earplugs still may not be enough. But hearing loss-related tinnitus also could be a cause. Sound masking has proven effective against random sounds and tinnitus as it balances noise levels in the room.

When to Consider Professional Help for Sleep

When all has failed, and you are highly aware and distressed by sounds at night, you might be experiencing hyperacusis. Hyperacusis is an intolerance to sounds, leading to extended psychological stress and anxiety. Hyperacusis can result from a head injury, an underlying mental health issue, or an ear infection. It will likely cause great disturbance when trying to sleep. If ordinary sounds become unbearable, you might need to see an audiologist. An audiologist can perform hyperacusis tests by measuring your sensitivity using pure tones.

Noise can have a severe impact on your sleep cycle. Throughout each stage, becoming disrupted can prevent you from reaching the level of sleep needed for brain and body repair. This can cause emotional distress with detrimental long-term consequences.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at Texas Professional Hearing Center to learn more about hearing treatment for sleep. You can give us a call at: (281) 420-8033.