Think of a color, and there is a noise for it. A tone. A hum. Some kind of buzz that people use to relax, meditate, or fall asleep.
I have a green noise video I toss on every so often to set the appropriate background sound that I can ignore while I work or meditate. Some people prefer pink noise. It’s a soft, steady wall of sound that supposedly helps people fall asleep and stay asleep.
NBC News reports that new research suggests that adding any kind of noise, including the popular pink, might have the opposite effect.
What is Pink Noise and Is It Bad for You?
In a recent study published in the journal Sleep, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania tested how different sounds affected sleep quality in 25 healthy adults. Over the course of a week, participants slept in either silence, pink noise, aircraft noise, a combination of both, or aircraft noise with earplugs.
Pink noise got trounced, absolutely clobbered, proving, at least in this study, to be terrible for your sleep. When played at a modest 50 decibels, pink noise was linked to a significant drop in REM sleep, the phase associated with memory consolidation and vivid dreaming.
On average, participants lost about 19 minutes of REM per night compared to sleeping in silence. Aircraft noise was worse, as you might expect, cutting into deep sleep and keeping people awake longer. Combining aircraft noise with pink noise worsened the situation, leading to less REM sleep, less deep sleep, and more time awake.
If you’re looking for something that actually provides the benefits pink noise claims to offer, earplugs are the best option. They blunted the damage from loud sounds and improved overall sleep quality.
The study could be the first shot across the bow for the entire broadband noise industry, which claims that color-coded sounds at different frequencies are inherently soothing. Speaking with Gizmodo, study lead author Mathias Basner says the evidence supporting sleep benefits has always been mixed, and some studies, like this one, point to clear downsides.
None of this is to say that pink noise is evil or anything. There were some signs that it could slightly reduce sleep fragmentation and help with certain environmental disturbances, but given how widely it’s used, the tangible, scientifically observed evidence doesn’t seem to justify the hype.
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