We’re happy to review products that claim to relieve insomnia – however, we always pass the opportunity to members of our insomnia help forums. That way, the most important people (our members) enjoy the benefits of trying new products and our readers get unbiased reviews.
This review comes courtesy of Saire, who also writes for the blog Fat Bloke Blogging. Enjoy!
I recently downloaded an app for the iPhone called Sleeping Pill for the iPhone (this item was originally charged for, but it is now a free download).
This app goes through 3 stages, where you go through them and it allegedly helps you get to sleep. The stages are as follows:
Clear your mind: You are given a notebook section where you can write things that are on your mind, where when you are done you can either email it to someone or save it in your notes section. I personally didn’t find this of any use, but it would be helpful for some people.
Relax and relieve stress: You are then given some breathing exercises to help you relax and unwind… this actually woke me up even more!
Simulation to make eyes tired: You now have to follow a Z around the screen of your iPhone which is designed to to tire your eyes and in theory make you feel ‘sleepy’. I didn’t find this to work at all, if anything I just found it annoying!
There is also an option for you to listen to relaxing music, which sadly didn’t work for me (odd as I have used various relaxation/meditation CDs in the past to great effect).
This app also has a section which has hypnosis, but you have to buy that file from within the app, which I have not bought as I did not feel it was actually worth it.
I have looked at comments on iTunes for this, and many have favoured it, so it works for some people, but it does not work for me personally.
I tried it for a week, and if anything I was more awake after using it… although it will work for some people I’m sure so don’t let my bad experiences put you off, and considering it’s free what do you have to lose?
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Do you find that most “environmental sounds” offered in clocks and on CDs to help you sleep are a) really from white noise generators (and damned irritating to me, awake or tying to sleep) b) on too short a loop, and you can tell when the cycle starts up again?
Richard Searles http://earthdancemusic.com/natureseries.html offers an album of Pacific Surf. It’s 60 minutes of nothing but surf music, captured in one recording at the beach. I had a chance to talk to him at a fair he was at–I have a couple of his albums from when they were originally issued, some time ago, and I was happy to chat. We got on the subject of “nature” sound albums and insomnia, and he showed me the three albums he had recorded. Two of them are foresty–one’s in a redwood grove, and the other by a lake with loons, and they do have birds in them, which I can find disrupting to sleep-time relaxation. Fog hors and bouys are right out!
I have yet to listen to the albums I picked up that weekend, so I can’t say anything about the entire album.