My last blog bemoaned my lack of deep sleep (according to the CPAP machine who I tend to believe more than the 'smart' watch that reported on a far larger quantity) and suggested that a method of improving the amount would be with binaural beats, described thus "an illusion created by the brain when you listen to two tones with slightly different frequencies at the same time. Your brain interprets the two tones as a beat of its own. The two tones align with your brain waves to produce a beat with a different frequency. This frequency is the difference in hertz (Hz) between the frequencies of the two tones. When you listen to binaural beats, your brain activity matches the frequency set by the frequency of the beat. This is called the frequency-following effect. This means you can use binaural beats to entrain your mind to reach a certain mental state." One has to listen via headphones - this is mentioned elsewhere. Also the sounds themselves have to be less than 1 KHz, a frequency that might seem limiting but it's actually a shade less than two octaves above middle C (256 Hz) and so should cover most musical sounds.
I know that alpha waves help one relax, focus and reduce stress. A hot shower causes the brain to start pumping out the alpha waves, which is why I get many good ideas whilst showering (I had another one last night). Theanine also increases the number of alpha waves. These waves have a frequency of 8-14 Hz, so listening to binaural beats with a difference of the above (barely noticeable) should increase the number of alpha waves.
At the moment, I'm more interested in increasing the number of delta waves: these have a frequency of 1-4 Hz, almost nothing. Delta waves are supposed to be connected to deep sleep, meditation and anti-aging, amongst other things.
After downloading the pieces, the next step to consider was how am I going to listen to them. One possibility would be using my good mp3 player, but as I want the pieces to repeat should the need arise (after all, together they last over seven hours which is about the amount I sleep each night), I need a dedicated mp3 player holding just these two pieces. After rooting about a bit with all my spare parts, I realised that I could use one of the mp3 players that I bought for swimming. I decided to use the second swimming mp3 player that I bought as this is easier to load and charge; one connects a regular 3.5 mm jack to it so I could use any type of wired headphones. Later on, I realised that I could also use my mobile phone as an mp3 player but the swimming player seemed to be sufficient.
For the first night (Tuesday) I used the earbud headphones that came with my mobile phone, but after a few hours I had to stop the experiment as these earbuds were causing a great deal of pain. I normally sleep turned to the right (this is healthier) and as a result, I was pressing on the earbud in my right ear. I also had to reduce the volume of the mp3 player, something that is easier to say than do (the controls are very limited and confusing).
The next day I decided to order the simplest pair of headphones that I could find: hopefully these will be ok. These would be held in place by the CPAP mask. It seems that all the headphones on sale here are gaming headphones with a microphone and thus unsuitable. What to do in the mean time? It occurred to me that I could try the headphones that come with the swimming mp3 player. These hook over the ear (I always had difficulty putting them on when going swimming, but now it seems easy) and the ear buds are flexible, as opposed to the hard earbuds of the first set that I tried. I used these on Wednesday night; not only did they cause me no pain, I also woke up in the morning feeling that I had had a good night's sleep (even though I still had to get up a few times during the night).
Thursday night was not good for experimental results as my nose was blocked for most of the night. I had to get up four or five times during the night, which culminated in walking around the flat at 2:30 am, trying to clear my nose. Yesterday I bought some nose drops from a pharmacy that helped immediately, although they don't have much effect on the cause of the blocked nose. Last night was much better in terms of sleep quality; I also awoke an hour earlier than I intended but still feeling refreshed.
Enough with the theory; what do the data show? As I have noted before, for some reason the CPAP machine provides data up to two days ago, so I only have readings for the first two nights of the binaural beats experiment. To set a base line, on Sunday and Monday I had one and two minutes deep sleep respectively. On Tuesday, even with the hard earbuds that were taken out at 11:30 pm, I had 19 minutes deep sleep - this is one of the highest amounts that I've had since I started recording deep sleep (1st September). On Wednesday, what seemed to be a good night, I had ... (drum roll) 33 minutes deep sleep! On 27 September, I had 34 minutes, so I still haven't broken my own record, but the increase over the past two days is dramatic.
Even so, there have been pairs of days with a similar increase followed by a decrease: on 15-16 October (only two weeks ago), the readings were 25 and 12, preceded by 2, 4 and 1, and followed by three days of apparently no deep sleep whatsoever. Then on 20-21 October, the readings were 11 and 21, followed by another five days of almost no deep sleep. So I can't conclude yet that listening to the binaural beats has caused a continued improvement in the amount of deep sleep; I'll need another week of readings to make it conclusive.
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