Having trouble to sleep due to noise.
Appreciate any options/recommendations.
Are ear plugs a good option? Is there any risk to ear health by always sleeping with them? Which ear plug have worked the best for you?
Other options?
I am a notoriously light sleeper.
I suffer in hotel rooms with noisy fridge compressors and a/c units.
My wife will roll on her back and snore at least once a night waking me up.
The cheap foam ear plugs hurt my ears, so I switched to silicon ear plugs. They don’t expand and push on the ears and they’re super cheap at any drug store.
I used them for cold open water swims too, great for triathlon.
I wanted a set of durable high quality plugs, so I’ve just ordered a set of these: https://www.flareaudio.com/products/isolate-mini
Don’t pay the full price on the website, they have a bunch of adverts on FB and twitter with huge discount links, I think I paid about ~$30USD?
They’re on the way, so no review yet.
I find the foam plugs work great. I use them when I really need a good night’s sleep:
Having trouble to sleep due to noise.
Appreciate any options/recommendations.
Are ear plugs a good option? Is there any risk to ear health by always sleeping with them? Which ear plug have worked the best for you?
Other options?
I’ve been using these for several months and I love them. I get two or three nights out of them before throwing them out and getting a new pair. I’ve gotten where now I don’t even notice them in. My wife is pregnant and it’s making her snore, so these were a perfect solution to both of us getting sleep. They cut out most all of the ambient noise.
While in the Army, I always wore SureFire EP3 earplugs. They were comfortable (as earplugs go), and do a good job of noise filtering without having that ‘something is in my ear’ hollow sound. I still wear them shooting and when I am at construction sites for work.
+1
Mack’s are great. And usually each package comes with a little travel case that holds 2 as a bonus. These are 32 db rating and occasionally you can find 33’s and I stock up when I do. It is VERY hard to find cheap foamies higher than 32 IME and I am not positive, but I think it may require a prescription from an ENT specialist. That’s pure speculation though since I just have never seen them. I am a very light sleeper also and have been pleased with Macks for many years.
Hammer REM Tabs
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I can’t stand wearing ear plugs, so I use this. Works great.
I can’t stand wearing ear plugs, so I use this. Works great.
Same here Mike. I take one about 30 mins before crashing. Really good pre-race
A cheap “white noise” solution is to find an app you can download to your iPad and then turn that on at night. My wife (super-light sleeper) uses a white noise free app that she got from the Apple app store. Did I mention “free”? Worth a try.
Another idea (but more $$$$) is to get custom ear plugs. There is a place in Boulder, CO called E.A.R. that makes earplugs that are based on a mold of your ear canal. I’m sure you can find them on the web somewhere. Good luck.
custom-molded silicone earplugs. They’re pricey but fit exactly and are super light.
The molding is the ear version of getting a dental mold – a couple minutes that will save your sleep.
White noise app does the trick for me.
Another vote for a white noise/ambient sounds phone app. I use it when I travel if the hotel is noisy with ear buds. Sometimes I also play white noise through a bluetooth speaker in my office if my neighbors are bugging me and that would work for sleeping too. It is surprising how low you can go with the volume and still sufficiently take the edge of distracting noise so you can fall asleep (or concentrate on work).
I use SleepMachine but there are a ton of them.
I work in the mining industry and have worn ear plugs for 12+ hour a day for weeks on end. There is no risk to ear health as long as your hands are clean when you put them in (though often my hands aren’t).
Different sizes and materials suit different people. Try different materials and shapes until you find one that is comfortable for you. I prefer the foam 3M Classic ear plugs.
If you have never worn earplugs watch a video on how to put them in correctly.
My wife swears by the Dohm white noise machine (it is on Amazon), and we actually use it in our 5 year old’s room to block out other household noise so she does not wake up while the rest of the house is still up.
Only downside I see is that she now can’t sleep without it, and we travel with one at all times.
Having trouble to sleep due to noise.
Appreciate any options/recommendations.
Are ear plugs a good option? Is there any risk to ear health by always sleeping with them? Which ear plug have worked the best for you?
Other options?
I sleep with a fan on for white noise, and have had GFs that have had the white noise maker listed in here. For me I also use ear plugs from time-to-time and have tried various ones. The best cheap, disposable ones for me and my ears and blocking noise and staying in while sleeping are the following design. The more half cyclinder ones will often fall out in the night and I don’t think they block as much sound either.
I live in an apartment in a city and while I certainly have gotten used to noise at night, I rarely wake up anymore except for the random siren that goes screaming by every so often.
When I first moved to the city apartment, from a house in the quiet suburbs, the noise was infuriating. Everything woke me up – noisy neighbors, cars, people outside, etc. I swear by white noise – whether it’s a fan, air conditioner, or other, something that is consistent in its noise throughout the night was the best thing for me. It might be as simple as getting a box fan – they’re around $15-$30. I couldn’t stand ear plugs, I could never get them in right and I’d end up waking up in the middle of the night and pulling them out because they were annoying me.
In case it helps anyone, this website sells earplug variety packs, which is nice if you want to try out different ones: https://www.earplugstore.com/unfoamtrialp.html. I prefer the E-A-R push-ins, since they don’t generate occlusion effect/internal biological noises: https://www.earplugstore.com/purefoearpln.html. I cut part of the ends off so I don’t have to push them in as far and so they don’t stick out while I sleep.
Other options - white noise.
There are websites that will let you play their white noise for free. This is what I did when I was between a fire department / ambulance service and a nursing home along with six lanes of traffic. Whether it was nature or classical music, it worked. Good luck.
I found by far the best solution to noise-disturbance at sleep.
Combination of:
- Active noise canceling headphones (I use the Taotronics over-ear cans)
- White noise sound gently played through the headphones (I use an android app, Sleep Pillow)
Between these two, you can literally drown out all but the loudest of noises (which you should likely be getting up for anyway.) My kid and wife can literally be going in and out of the room I’m sleeping in while having a full out conversation and I won’t even hear a thing.
The only caveat is that you’re wearing bulky headphones so this will be tough for side sleepers.
I actually don’t wear them all night - I wear them until I wake up (I have insomnia, CPAP, etc, so I’m always waking up intermittently) which is usually 2-4 hours later, and then I just turn them off and remove them.