[1] https://academic.oup.com/sleep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/s...
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/advice-wearing-ea...
Again, not medical advice, just anectdotal experience..
Edit: this is entirely due to the 'Stop playing when falling asleep' function of iOS 26, which I loathe. But this feature barely make it worthwhile.
I moved to the US 15 years ago and it was too noisey for me to sleep well (fire trucks, cars, etc), but ear plugs solved the problem and are portable to other places you might need to sleep.
They’re little putty molds that you shape to fit your ear.
I also rip them in half before molding so I get 2 ear plugs from 1 putty.
I’ve been using swimmers plugs for a few years now and they’ve been fine. Do you use an eye mask too?
The downside is they're very expensive, relative to other earplugs and mine no longer seal as well as they used to so I'd need to get a new pair. They're still better than nothing. I started using earbuds around the same time, from using cans, and I wonder if I've very slightly widened my ear's opening.
I also use an eye mask if I'm somewhere that doesn't have good curtains or blinds. Really works very well, but I recommend one that wraps around and doesn't have an elastic band to dig into your ears (Matador makes a good one).
Frankly, my sleep is so poor that if they mind the noise level they can take what they can carry.
Apparently they immediately decided to break into my neighbours a few doors down while people were sleeping.
I used to wear them every night and they definitely improved my sleep. But then I also had instances where my ear was blocked with wax for several days.
YMMV
Then I fixed my health.
Stop eating the foods that stimulate it.
I now have visible production on a tissue or cotton swab once a week or fewer.
Also, for anyone getting reading this, cotton swabs in your ears is a bad idea and usually makes the problem worse (pushes wax in and compacts it).
Two observations. 1. Often you wake up after a loud noise but like 5 minutes later with no memory of it. 2. even if you don't wake up from the noise your breathing changes, more likely to talk in sleep and shuffle more. So even if you not waking up your quality of sleep is disrupted.
Our case had some random construction like noise in the early morning, lasted around 10 seconds and disappeared. However, we noted even ordinary sounds we didn't think was loud was effecting our sleep.
Solution for that place was earplugs and a loud fan to generate white noise.
And thanks for sharing that comment, I can second your two observations
For multiple months, I thought I’m waking up at night because I need to go to the bathroom so often (even checked for insulin resistance but markers were perfect). Interestingly enough, most of the times (not always) there are one or multiple louder sounds just before I wake up to go to the bathroom. Zero memory or conscious perception of the noise, still woke up and feeling like I need to go to the bathroom
I spend time in two places. San Juan Islands WA and Santa Cruz, CA.
On island, nights are too quiet. During the day, a float plane a mile away sounds like it is next door.
In Santa Cruz, the house is on a major street. Busses, ambulances all sorts of yahoos.
I sleep better quiet. But I sleep even better when settled - mind not going, etc.
I generally don’t sleep well at all. The biggest factor is - has my brain settled. Background and noise don’t matter.
An off topic addendum - those are 2 very nice places to be. Maybe someday.
I started meditating recently (~10mins per day) and have found it to be surprisingly effective. It’s a combination of body scanning & mindfulness meditation.
It doesn’t always help, but tends to.
It’s funny how many things can boil down to "rich distributed traces" and events / logs.
> Measure before you fix
In my case, I got a few IKEA CO2 sensors, and after leaving them in the bedrooms for a few days, we found that leaving an outside window slightly open + the bedroom door open, kept the CO2 levels below 600PPM at night.
We're 1000ft/300m away from a motorway, but fortunately the noise pollution isn't bad. So ventilating (even as it's getting cold) turned out to be a simple fix. I hadn't thought of collecting sleep data from our devices, but maybe I'll get an AI to do that, so I can correlate our sleep quality with the environment.
Most wakeups are from noise (I can see it in the data) but high CO2 levels can also make me a lighter sleeper.
Not sure where you’re based but in Europe the priority is mostly on heat isolation, so air movement suffers. The US is better in that regard. There was a big thread on that topic on X the other week (Peter the indie hacker initiated it and there were some good recommendations in case you’re the owner of the flat)
“Almost 2%. The reduction in carbon-dioxide concentration when 60 square centimetres of plants were placed in an office, according to one study.”
“These results are not applicable to typical buildings, where outdoor-to-indoor air exchange already removes volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at a rate that could only be matched by the placement of 10–1000 plants/m2 of a building's floor space.[2]
The results also failed to replicate in future studies”
Big fan of plants though, help me feel calm
I went to work at a BBB office once. They turned all their computers off at night and every morning they were back on. It was just "normal" for them.
I can't even remember what problem I was troubleshooting. At the time I was working on IVR systems.
Anwayz, I was working late in their office. Everyone had turned off their computers and went home. At exactly Midnight, every computer in the office turned back on.
I walked around the office looking at desks wondering what had happened. On one persons desk was an alarm clock with a very quiet alarm buzzing. I checked the clock and it was set for midnight (probably a default). About two minutes later it turned off automatically.
I turned off computers and re-set the alarm to go off a few minutes later.
When that alarm clock went off it somehow caused either draw or feedback in the wiring that caused all the computers to turn back on. At the time I wondered if it had something to do with wake on lan.
In any case, I suggested that person take their alarm clock home.
In my case, thinking too much about the causes of bad sleep actually contributed to making sleep worse, so if this guy is anything like me then this whole project could be hurting his sleep rather than helping.
I grew up in the country side and unfortunately, where I live now, double glassing isn’t a thing unless you live in a recently built house.
That doesn’t nullify what you’re saying, obviously putting worries into sleep affects the sleep itself. Still thought it was an interesting project to build as I’m anyways cautious about noise and air pollution topics :)
Have the same pattern, issue is cortisol/stress, not sounds / etc that happen precisely at night
Built simular things tonwhat Op did (thoug using Oura for sleep tracking, not Garmin)
Result: no statistically significant variations in sounds, CO2 normal etc. Cortisol is what doctors/AI told me first
> *= I do not like Garmin, I think they're a fraudulent company systematically breaching consumer rights and I'm looking for alternatives. Already converted multiple people to Coros.
That’s not how lightning and thunder work.
It resonates well with what some people have been saying about building software for 1 person.
I love my Garmin, but it's one of the worst smart watches to track sleep with. It consistently ranks poorly in tests that stack it up against pro sleep equipment, and from my experience it struggles to even detect sleep times properly. That 3:32 event that the watch said has pulled you out of deep sleep may not have been real.
Otherwise making sure the windows are properly sealed is first resort. And if you’re living with other people (partner, flatmates, family) it also helps to check the doors
Slightly off the main topic, but I can strongly second that recommendation for Coros gear!
No relation other than a very happy Coros user (Pace Pro). They make an excellent series of sport & health monitoring watches and bike gear, best GPS I've ever seen producing the most accurate run/bike tracks I've ever seen (using 5 GNSS systems: GPS, Galileo, QZSS, etc.), very reasonable pricing compared to the competition, continuous useful updates, and just a great overall approach to health and technology.
I spend most of my days in front of CLIs but here I really think a cli wouldn’t be the right tool for the job..
Anybody living in a mid to large city or urban area could have told you that. What a waste of resources.
AI is melting your real world understanding: https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/biphasic-sle...
Also, not sure if you’ve taken the time to read the post but it clearly states that I’m not using AI to analyze the data. The point of posting this was a different one
I’m happy because I can clearly hear what wakes me up at night. I knew I wake up from noise and now I can clearly see it in the data that I wake up right after door slams, noisy motorbikes, car horning, and dishes from the kitchen (own and neighbors)
After taking action I now sleep better and don’t have those random wake-up moments.
Also the AI-generated hero image looks vile.
The intention was to have something less detailed than the screenshot in the post.
About the other thing: yes this would have worked for a night or so. I wanted to be able to go back and forth between nights and compare. I also had concerns about the SD-card durability and storage capacity. Still, after an hour into letting the coding agent do its thing, I was impressed by the result, so more and more ideas popped into my head