There are many benefits to living in the city, including access to a wide variety of amenities, but a significant downside is the noise. Noise can be an issue outside of the city, too, if you live near a major road, for instance, or have loud neighbors. Excessive noise can be annoying, but it can also provoke anxiety and depression and lead to poor sleep. Fortunately, you can do something about it, even if moving is not possible.

How Is Noise Bad for Sleep?

The obvious answer is that it makes it difficult to fall asleep. If you live on a busy street corner or near a road, the constant sounds are not conducive to drifting off to a restful sleep.

The bigger issue, though, is the disruption. If you’re tired enough and don’t have a sleep disorder, you can probably fall asleep even with street noise. Once asleep, disruptive sounds arouse you from sleep, even if you don’t remember waking. Sleep experts say you need to be awake for four minutes to remember it happening.

So, if you don’t remember waking, is it a problem? Yes. Regular disruptions from people talking, trains, car horns, and other city sounds negatively impact overall sleep quality.

Being awoken constantly, even for a minute or less, disrupts the sleep cycle. It prevents you from getting into the deep, restorative sleep you need to feel rested and recharged. Studies show that people feel less alert and suffer performance deficits after sleeping with multiple disruptions. This is true even when people sleep more than 95% of the time they’re in bed.

Noise Sensitivity, Mental Health, and Sleep

Anyone will suffer to some degree when noisy disruptions wake them throughout the night. Some people are more sensitive and experience greater anxiety and depression when exposed to disruptive and annoying noises.

Noise that triggers anxiety at night only worsens the cycle of poor sleep. Inadequate rest, in turn, increases anxiety. It’s important to break this cycle to sleep better and improve mental health.

How to Improve Sleep in Spite of External Noises

Whether it’s upstairs neighbors stomping late at night or horns honking outside, you can’t do much to stop these sounds. What you can do is take steps to sleep in spite of them:

• Block it. If possible, block sounds with windows and thick drapes and soft, sound-absorbing furniture. With earplugs, sleep can be blissfully quiet, but not everyone tolerates something in their ears.
• Drown it out. Another strategy is to drown out disruptive sounds with more continuous, soothing sounds. A white noise machine or app with sound mixes allows you to control what you hear. There’s a difference between the two. Check out the city sounds on the BetterSleep app. It provides more continuous noise, whereas actual city noises are punctuated by frequent, irregular sounds that wake you up.
• Distract. Distraction can also help. Try meditation before bed to clear your mind and relieve the anxiety that makes it harder to sleep. Meditations help you focus on something other than noises.

BetterSleep has several tools to help you improve your quality of sleep. You’ll find meditations, soothing bedtime stories, and of course, sounds. You can choose from the extensive collection of soothing sounds and create mixes that drown out disruptive noises.

Sleep disturbances happen nearly everywhere. When you can’t change your environment, change how you approach sleep to get a more restorative slumber. Check out the soothing sounds on the BetterSleep app to block out those sounds.