Tech to help sleep

I previously talked about sleep on a thread a few months ago…

But, does anyone else use tech to help them sleep?

I have an old Iphone 6S that I bought it about 18 months ago to stream stuff on the tv -before I got my first Chromebook. I got it for $99 new at Wal-Mart, since it was much cheaper than an ipad, and I never needed to activate it because I did not buy it to use as a phone…

Now that I have 3 Chrome devices, I don’t use it anymore for streaming…

But around Nov or Dec of last year, I found a cool app called Thunderspace. It basically plays the sound of rain and thunder off in the distance. There are over 10 different variations of sounds, but I have used 1 of the 2 free sound variations for almost 6 months now.

I finally paid for the app yesterday, and unlocked all the other variations. I figured I use it every night - may as well.

Amazingly enough - it helps me get to sleep super fast. Every time I get up in the middle of the night and come back to bed, I play it again. The default setting is for 90 minutes, but you can adjust that. I just leave it that way.

Now, my girlfriend does not like it - she claims it makes her have strange dreams, and she is convinced there is something subliminal about it. It doesn’t bother me, and I use headphones to play the sound when I am visiting her.

Anyway - anyone else do something similar?

I prefer android phones, and I have some similar programs on my android phone. But, I have not found one I like as much as Thunderspace on the iOS. And, there is no android version of that program, unfortunately.

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Yeah, I occasionally use White Noise Deep Sleep Sounds on my iPhone - similar to what you use. I tend to use a brown noise setting. Repeating noise doesn’t work, nor rain or anything like that. White noise is too high pitched for, but brown noise is low enough to get me to sleep.

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My wife likes to have “Sleep” music playing all night. It has helped to reduce her quantity/severity of night terror dreams. I set up an old, good quality 2.1 computer speaker system under the bed and an old mp3 player that plays a 6hr track of sleep music I took off Youtube and is set to repeat.

My head starts to whiz about things when I go to bed. I found listening to audio books helps keep my mind occupied and I could then go to sleep while listening. Plus I get some more learning fitted in to my day. For this I used to wear wired headphones connected to my Andriod phone and I would wake up in the night tangled up :grin: For the last few years I have used a wireless bluetooth ear buds set, which work great. Philips SHB5250BK

If the audio book chapters are long then I set the Android player app to stop after 45mins. If the chapters are short then I set the app to stop at the end of a chapter. In either case if I am still awake I can just press play on the headphones and this starts playing again and resets the 45min or end of chapter counter again. When the timer is set the volume slowly drops at the end time, which is nice.

I used to use Audible for the audio books but did not like their business model. Plus they are/were DRM laced. I would then have to decrypt them to MP3 to use where I liked. I now buy the audio books mainly from Downpour The best audiobook app I found is: Smart Audiobook Player

As a side note an interesting thing I noticed with this practice is how my brain turns my ears off. As I am nearly fully asleep but still partially conscious I can not hear the audiobook and think it has stopped. So I go to move my arm to press play again on the wireless headphones and the action of wanting to move my arm turns the brain/ear connection back on and I can hear the audio book again. Only happens now and then but it possibly explains why I can sleep in noisy environments. Saying this the brain/ear connection is still working but I am not consciously aware of it as when I hear a sound even a quiet one that is out of place in the night it wakes me straight up. So some filtering is going on.

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If there is a audio version of the Delphi Database Bible, it will put you to sleep…

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What works for me is one of:

“okay google, play ocean sounds for half an hour”

“okay google, play thunderstorm sounds for half an hour”

There is also

“okay google, help me relax for half an hour”

which randomizes the sounds I think, but I have never actually used it because I want what I want.

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I used music for years as a teen (in the 80s), to help me go to sleep. I played the same cassette over and over every night for years - Steve Perry - Street Talk :slight_smile:

But, music doesn’t work for me anymore. That rain app works better for me now. But, we all seem to have our preferences.

I just put in my AirPods and put on Windows Weekly. I love it when the new show hits every week. And I don’t mean this to be an insult…sleep is very important :rofl:. I think it’s because of Paul’s sonorous voice; and Leo and Mary Jo are both on the quiet side on this show. If I turn the volume down really low so I have to listen, it puts me out.

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The best Audio recorder/player I have found.


The best recording is from YouTube “The Best Documentary Ever Series”

Interesting. I never even knew Google could do that.

Edit - I just tried it on my phone. Cool. Learn something new every day. Thanks. I tried it with just rain sounds too.

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And for those with iPhones, you can use any media source you like and set a timer to shut off all playback after a set time. Gets around apps that don’t have a sleep timer.

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@Mistershipwreck, the most important thing I’ve found for sleep is an LCHF diet. I started this after Steve Gibson’s off-topic podcasts on Security Now! (archived on his webpage in The Low Carb Choice. One resource Steve notes is the Volek/Phinney books The Art & Science of Low-Carb Living/Performance .

The pertinent finding: burning beta hydroxybutyrate (or simply BoHB, the smallest ketone body) in our mitochondria generates far less ROS than burning glucose. In simple words: on a low-carb diet, you get more heat and less smoke :grinning:. This has been noted in science papers like KETONES INHIBIT MITOCHONDRIAL PRODUCTION OF REACTIVE OXYGEN SPECIES PRODUCTION FOLLOWING GLUTAMATE EXCITOTOXICITY BY INCREASING NADH OXIDATION. There are also papers like this that point to longevity in our organ tissues through a low-carb diet.

What does this have to do with sleep? Plenty! Less ROS means there’s less work to fix/remove the damage from those teeny tiny molecular bullets. Since going onto a low-carb diet, it’s far easier to get to sleep, sleep well and deeply, and to dream vividly.

I usually go to sleep listening to a podcast. I prefer a non-technical podcast like Mike Rahlmann’s Be Our Guest podcast, and I’m most fond of the episodes where Mike interviews a guest about their Disney vacations. I usually find I can remember about 3 minutes of a show before I zonk out. I play podcasts with iTunes on my Mac running 10.14; I use the AppleScript Just Play This One to play a single podcast episode.

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Thanks for the info. Very interesting. I appreciate it. I’ll look into that and see what it is about.

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