The first symptom of my insanely busy life is my inability to fall asleep. I've never had an issue until now- partly because I'm still not used to sleeping alone, and partly because my mind just processes everything I did for the day and tries to solve anything left unfinished. I actually get a lot done while lying in bed, which is great for research and tough engineering problems, but terrible for my sleeping habits. I have tried several things to help cope.
Homedics Sound Spa
This idea actually started out as a way to drown out the loud meows and general nighttime havoc-wreaking that my cat used to cause. It worked beautifully, too. I got hooked on the "rain" sound and use it to sleep every night now. It drowns out random noises that would have woken me up otherwise (since I'm a super light sleeper).
I stumbled on this yesterday after seeing an ad for the Delta Sleep system by the same guy. It promised longer, more vivid dreams- cool. But after seeing some of the negative reviews, I clicked around and found this one- the Gamma system had all really positive reviews. I was mostly interested in hearing the sound samples- supposedly, the "music" (I use the term loosely, since some of the tracks, this one in particular, are more odd noises and ambiance than music) is set up so that you hear layers of synthesized sounds combined with pulsing frequencies that encourage certain brain patterns and states. Very cool. But what does it sound like? I clicked the sample, and listened for a few seconds.. and it felt like my brain had melted. So odd was it, in fact, that I bought the CD on the spot. Since it's a digital CD, I had it ready last night and wanted to give it a try while sleeping just for fun.
...BIG mistake. While this album was on, I couldn't seem to focus on any one thing, and I felt incredibly relaxed. The problem? My mind was so active, it took me hours to sleep. When I did sleep, I had very vivid dreams, but I woke up in the middle of the night and could not get back to sleep until I turned it off.
I know it wasn't meant for sleeping, so I'm not really surprised. I'm just amazed that it made such a huge difference. Maybe I'll give the Delta sleep album a try. I'll save the Gamma waves for something else :)
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