EP #1358: Unlock The Power Of Pink Noise: Sleep Sounder, Remember More

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Hi I m Lisa Davis So glad you are listening to Health Power You can see some clips from the shows if you d like if you go to my Twitter TikTok and Instagram at lisa davis mph All right today we re talking about an article from Naturally Savvy how pink noise boosts memory and improves sleep Now I didn t even know there was such thing as pink noise until I came across this article I have a white noise machine and that helps me tremendously but let s jump in and find out what this pink noise is all about So changes in sleep patterns occur as we get older with the most common ones being more trouble staying asleep and a harder time falling asleep And according to the National Sleep Foundation these are a normal part of the aging process But now researchers say they may have a solution to these problems and it may even boost your memory as well which is pink noise So I mentioned the white noise machines which according to noise sound engineer Stephane Pigeon is not what most of us typically think of when we hear the term comforting sounds that help us block out the surrounding environment Now Pajone explains white noise as the following A true white noise deals in the second fundamental component of the sound wave the frequency Frequency is how fast the waveform is vibrating per second That s pretty technical It s easier to understand if you associate it with a single note Take the middle C note on a keyboard That note has a frequency of about 261 1 hertz To make white noise a sound engineer combines an equal amount of energy of every frequency a human can hear Imagine it like hundreds of musicians playing every single note you can hear at once at the same volume That s white noise Wow I didn t realize it was really interesting Okay so what s pink noise So pink noise is a soothing gentle sound composed of octaves possessing equal energy It is essentially the background noise we are used to hearing every day and don t even notice Researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston Illinois discovered that if they synced pink noise to the brainwaves of older men and women while they slept the subjects experienced better quality of deep sleep as well as an improvement in memory That s so interesting Now it s been shown in numerous studies over the years sleep is critical for converting short-term memories into long-term memories The type of sleep that is necessary for this conversation is deep sleep AKA Lisa Davis 02 23 29 slow wave sleep or non dream state sleep which is part of the non rapid eye movement sleep cycle And as we get older the quality of deep sleep declines which in turn can have a significant impact on memory as well as sleep quality Deep sleep is also important because it s a stage when the body cells increase production and there s a reduction the breakdown of proteins Thus this is a time of tissue repair giving meaning to the term beauty sleep Other benefits of deep sleep are a slowing of activity in the areas of the brain involved with emotion social engagement and decision-making which suggests deep sleep helps people maintain an emotional balance So let s talk about how scientists use pink noise So in previous studies in young adults they found a link between acoustic sound stimulation of deep sleep brain activity and an improvement of memory Now these findings prompted Dr Phyllis Zeea professor of neurology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern and her colleagues to try acoustic simulation in a group of older adults and see how it affected sleep and memory So if you want all of the details of the study you can see the show notes I ll just tell you briefly that the study group consisted of 13 men and women ages 60 to 84 who each were subjected to one night of acoustic stimulation involving pink noise synced to the participants brave waves and one night of sham placebo stimulation So I m gonna guess what happened is and this is what happened that memory recall was three times better after acoustic stimulation Well I might not have known it was three times better With pink noise in it was with the placebo stimulation the improvement in memory correlated with the boost in the quality of deep sleep and therefore an improvement in sleep quality So I think I d like to get a pink noise machine I think it sounds absolutely fascinating So Check that out check me out check out the show notes Keep coming back to Health Power five days a week rate review subscribe Thanks so much Have a great day Click here to visit this podcast episode