Influence of sound during your sleep

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The effect of sound by waking up

Sound can have negative and positive influences. To loud and irregular sounds could wake you up. Sounds louder than 30 decibel (for example bird calls) will have effect on the sleep of most people. Ofcource, the severity and intensity at which noise impacts sleep is different for everyone. But the most likely moment when noises will wake up people is at stage 2 of their sleep. (just after the REM-sleep).

This fact will be used to wake someone as pleasant as possible. Stage 2 is namely the optimal moment to wake up. Then, people aren't in a deep sleep or in a REM-sleep, so you won't be disorientated. The alarm can be very soft because people will wake up very quick in stage 2, which is another benefit.

Effect of sound during sleep

As told above, sound can have negative influences during your sleep. But sound can also be used to create a positive influence. A sound which have positive influences is white noise, which is a constant sound. This sound will reduce the difference between peak sounds and background sounds during your sleep. So it minimalized the variaty. White noise can be created because of a fan, an air purifier or an white noise machine. The amount of decibels of the white noise should be below the 50 to 65 decibels.

Nowadays, white noise is used because of babies who have irregular sleep rhythms. They won't wake up because of noise of their parents who are still awake. And they also associate white noise with sleeping, so they will fall faster asleep as without white noise.