5 Great Sleep Headphones
Whether you bunk with a snorer or rely on white noise to relax, sleep headphones from brands like Anker and Ozlo can be the key to a good night’s rest
When you shop through retailer links on our site, we may earn affiliate commissions. 100% of the fees we collect are used to support our nonprofit mission. Learn more.
I need a solid 8 hours of sleep to feel human. And to doze off, I need it to be quiet. That last part isn’t always easy. Like many of us, I sleep next to a snorer and live in a notoriously noisy city, where honking and street chatter go on at all hours. I know I’m not alone.
"It’s a major issue because noise is so ubiquitous," says Mathias Basner, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine who has studied the effect of noise on sleep for 25 years. Our bodies are hardwired to monitor our environment for potential threats, he says, even when we’re unconscious. "It’s not easy to turn off our biology," he says. "It’s fragmenting our sleep—and that has long-term health consequences," including increased risks of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
This is true even when we’re not aware of waking up. "A lot of what’s happening to our sleep is beyond our own insight," Basner says. In his sleep studies, participants often report enjoying great, uninterrupted slumbers. "If you look at the physiological data, they woke up 60, 70 times to noise events, and they’re completely unaware," he says.
How Sleep Headphones Can Help
For many people, sleep headphones worn throughout the night can reduce these disruptions, masking a partner’s snoring or nearby air traffic with constant, soothing noise instead.
"Softer sounds, more like the sounds of the natural world that our ancestors got good at sleeping through for millennia, don’t often interrupt sleep," says Michael Grandner, director of the University of Arizona’s Sleep and Health Research Program. White noise can helpfully create a "blanket of sound that absorbs other environmental sounds, protecting you from even perceiving them," he says.
BEST TIME TO BUY:
