Blocking Out the Noise Pollution

Do you live in a busy city, have loud neighbors, or generally struggle with regular the noise in your environment? This can affect your insomnia in so many ways, it makes falling asleep and staying asleep, so challenging.

Because your insomnia is environment-induced, that does not make it less disruptive to your life. Sometimes we have to live where we live and make a plan for everything else around that. Noise pollution can contribute substantially to aggravating and triggering insomnia.

Sleep is healthy

Our bodies and brains need to sleep. Sleep is the time when our bodies rest, repair, and replenish for the next day. When a person does not sleep well the body gets exhausted, as do their organs, and they need sufficient time to rest in order to function at optimal levels.

Sleep disturbances can lead to complications with your health and well-being. It affects your moods and your mental health in various ways. This is something that we should all strive to better - our sleep hygiene, bedtime routines, nutrition, and sleep habits. As we know this is easier said than done.

Life has a way of throwing us many things that we cannot control, so I believe that when we have the opportunity to control something and improve our life we should grab it with open arms and try. While the outcome is not always guaranteed, we can always try.

What we can control

This rings so true for insomnia, and I am always digging around, asking, and talking about it. Looking for new ideas and improvements to manage my insomnia better. Goodness, some days it feels like it is managing me.

Noise pollution has affected my sleep over the years, and this is one of those things that I have tried to get a grip on, which I think I have managed well.

It is helpful to make your home as quiet as possible if you struggle to sleep with noise. Switching everything off that does not need to be on. I close windows that do not need to be open and so on.

Ear plugs

There are so many varieties of earplugs on the market - for flying, swimming, and the like. This is the most wonderful thing. You get them made of foam, and a putty-like silicone for swimmers. There is a variety in our local stores that can leave you quite astounded, They are soft and gentle on the ears, and I find that ear plugs are very, very helpful for blocking out loud or disruptive noises. This is not always a viable option, some of us have small children and others live in areas where we need to be able to hear what is in our surroundings.

I make sure to have more than one pair and I change and clean them regularly. The putty silicone, also called swimmer putty, is my favorite as the noise is dramatically reduced.

Earphone band

This is something I actually only recently discovered - earphones in a headband so that nothing goes into your ears. While this does not block out sound, I am able to play my sleep meditation and distracts me from the noise in my environment. I can listen to guided meditations and fall asleep without worrying about earphones being in my ears and hurting me. Or even worse waking me up because they are bothering me.

This easily distracts me from low to medium noise and makes falling asleep a little easier.

Managing noise pollution

For me, a sleep headband is the way to go, 9 times out of 10 anyway. This way I can listen to a guided meditation as I fall asleep while it drowns out the noise of the outside world to a seemingly calm relaxing hum.

I have found this particularly helpful when sleeping in new places. It is by far one of my favorite aids when trying to get some sleep. On the rare occasion that I need total silence, I will reach for the earplugs, but being a single parent to a young child, this is not always a viable option for me.

I would love to hear from the community and see what you do to curb noise that bothers you when you are trying to get some well-deserved rest.