spsn | White Noise (Reply)

i_am_zan knows me so well and that includes my sleeping problem. I've been having sleeping problem for months with sleeping intervals of 2-4 hours (5 hours if I'm lucky), so you can imagine how many hours I actually go on snooze in deep sleep each day despite the effort in sleeping early (obviously I watch so much lesser drama nowadays). I've tried essential oil, which smells heavenly but only works for awhile, unfortunately, but it does make you happier sniffing it; eye mask (those disposable eye masks endorsed by Sho-chan), they're great to make your eyes relax, but it doesn't help you sleep the whole 7 hours non-stop; and the last resort, sleeping pills (I took Benadrill equivalent, which was OK-ed by my bro, the pharmacist). Sleeping pills were a good last resort if you have the entire 10 hours to spend on literally sleeping, because what would happen if you only have around 6-7 hours sleeping time? Yep, you wake up with drowsiness and what do you do for instant recovery? You take coffee, and the cycle continues. I used to be able to sleep despite having coffee during the day (2 cups of kopi-o-kosong aka long black is no biggie for me). However, apparently this ability vanished after I stopped coffee or tea intake for the past 6 months due to my iron defficiency (this effort turned out to be futile as my last test turned out to be STILL in deficit level, boohoo, and now I'm taking iron supplement and awaiting for another follow up test in 2 months time). So, if I take 1 bloody instant coffee now, not even a long black, let alone kopi-o-kosong, I have to be prepared to count sheeps until 2am (or watching mindless youtube clips, or counting more sheeps).

So, obviously my eyebags getting darker and I'm sleep deprived, and work doesn't make life easier, and I'm getting easily provoked and cranky, and my blood pressure rise up (I managed to lower down my blood pressure somehow, a yey at the end of 2016 though, and I pray hard that it remain stable at that level).

Knowing all my health issues (especially when I complain about them every so often, and I do have a lot), and obviously I'm not the only one with the same sleeping problem in my office, my colleague suggested white noise. What's white noise? I also have no idea until I google (hurray for uncle google). The official wiki is here. But in my own definition, white noise is those sounds which are static enough that it can manipulate your psychological mood and lead your brain into a relax and calm state, and without you knowing it, you're snoozing. On top of white noise, there're also pink, brown, and purple noise. What's the difference? Honestly, I have no idea, especially wiki elaborate all those in academic terms. But the gist is, all these noise comes with a function to relax you. Some people use these noises to help them concentrate better and be productive in their study or work... not for me. I tried and I got tired instead, just give me Shinhwa/Arashi/V6 as BGM for my waking up hours, they'll do the job for me. If you youtube white noise, so many things and option will come up, from just statics to rains, nature, fans, water dripping, heartbeats sounds, with 1001 different frequency, volume, tempo, I mean, even rain has so many different sound (with thunder, light rain, drizzles, storms, heavy storms, rain dripping on tile, on tin roof, and so many more) and with duration. I-tunes also have 1001 options for you. And, we also have apps for this where you can record your own white noise, or mix and match and make your own white noise play list (pretty cool, until I don't know how to export the bloody thing into my music player in my phone).

So after 1 week of experiment, I find that I cannot use those itunes music files because they only last for 6-9 minutes and they have the decending sound to nothingness and if you loop it, it'll have stops and intervals. Now I kind of get it why youtube has 3, 6, 8, 9, 10 hours variation of clips. And I need the 10 hours clip to be able to sleep at least 6 hours non-stop. What happen with the shorter ones? I woke up after it finished, and with the looped itunes files, I could feel that the noise is finishing and I ended up not 100% sleeping. I also noticed that I only can take light rain sounds (rain makes me feel cooler, and it confirms the psychological thing when it rains, you just want to cuddle inside your comforter and snooze), and fire crackling sounds at most (it makes me feel warm and toasty, and zzzz). And it has to be in static, simple and stable waves, and no additional bird chirping, thunder, etc. It really goes down to your preferrence. So far, it works, and I hope I can ditch the sleeping pills option with this, and this is cheap and practically free (if you just use youtube and apps).

The clips which are working for me so far are: this, this (my favorite), and this.

I hope by sharing this experience, it can help those who have similar sleeping problems because sleep is important, as important as the rainbow pills in our lives!