Researchers observed 25 healthy adults, ages 21 to 41, in a sleep laboratory during eight-hour sleep opportunities over seven consecutive nights.

Absurdly low n. Additionally, I've become very skeptical of anything coming out of sleep labs after my wife was sent to one (at a prestigious teaching hospital) by her doctor some years ago: the 'sleep opportunity' was lights out at 9pm for 8 hours, and the staff were wholly indifferent to the fact that she's a night owl and prefers to sleep after midnight. Additionally she reported that it was not particularly quiet or dark.

I am not a fan of noise machines but I have noticed that I sleep best on rainy nights, which has a similar average sound spectrum, and is about the same as the sound of your blood circulating near your eardrums. Testing pink noise along with aircraft noise (which is closer to red noise) is equivalent to just making the noise level higher with slightly more midrange energy. Some noise can be relaxing for light sleepers; too much is just annoying.

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throwforfeds an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The thing that stood out more to me than the n being low is "the participants reported not previously using noise to help them sleep or having any sleep disorders." Sleeping with pink noise seems like something that you'd end up getting acclimated to.

My n=1 is that I often sleep with a fan on and live in NYC -- whenever I stay in a place where there is no noise I tend to have trouble sleeping, so I end up turning on some nature sounds on my phone from myNoise.

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el_benhameen an hour ago | parent [-]

Yeah that seems silly. I was a quiet-room sleeper until I met my wife, who needs some kind of white noise to sleep. I eventually adapted and now sleep much better with noise than without (at least subjectively), but that change took a while, at least several months. I found it quite difficult to sleep with for a while.

	▲	stogot 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I slept without noise for years until I needed it for a while for (reason) and now it feels difficult to sleep without noise. Acclimation’s a real effect

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staticassertion an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Perhaps too meta or off topic but I thought it was funny that you thought their n was low and then cited a story about one person.

	▲	gboss an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The way I’m understanding it is that it’s more that if there’s a real population of people like his wife, that is only 5 percent of the actual population or even higher, for example, it may not be caught by such a small sample size.

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lukeinator42 10 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's a within-subject design and they literally did a power analysis in the paper. This is not absurdly low n.

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oivey 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That is a low n, but I’m not sure what the alternative is. Surely random anecdotes (n=1) are even less powerful?

	▲	samus an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The low n is not the only questionable thing about the study. What a big n gives you is diversity of samples and tighter confidence intervals, but it can not correct for methodological limitations. Specifically, they didn't invite any people with sleep issues or who are already sleeping under noise. Therefore the conclusion is a "duh" - if you don't require pink noise to sleep, then don't add it.
	▲	anigbrowl 44 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I'm not inviting you to draw conclusions from my semi-random (but informed by years of professional thought about why people like different sounds) anecdote.
	▲	Darge an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Random anecdotes might be less biased. For example, no pressure to publish nor sell a product.

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zeta0134 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My options are "fairly loud, low rumbly, mostly full spectrum noise" or "continual, nonstop barking." Only one of these options makes sleep possible. :) I'd prefer quiet, but it's so rare to actually have it.

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Mistletoe 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I’ll match your anecdote. I slept with white noise in my former home which was in a noisier town and felt it improved my sleep. Now that we’ve moved to a nice historic neighborhood I find I sleep best with nothing on at all. The silence there is so wonderful. Maybe silence is the ultimate luxury.

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DANmode 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sleep labs are like doctors are like mechanics are like restaurants - their only legal obligation is to not kill you,

not be of any particular quality.

Do your homework.

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ChiMan 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Common sense and experience inform my theory of good sleep: Pitch black, stone quiet, with noise limited to pre-sleep audial approximations of the dream-like mental noise that precipitates sleep.