Thread: Ambient Noise in the Real World

Recently since summer has kicked in and it has started to get hot at night I have employed the use of one of our large fans to cool me off. The noise doen't bother me at all infact for some reason it helps me calm down and fall asleep.

Anyways I was wondering if there is a connection with me dreaming very little, or not rembering them to the noise of the fan in my room. Should I discontinue using my fan if I wish to pursue my dreams?

Nate

Not that long ago, it was getting to warm for me to sleep at night, and I would wake up for an hour or two in the middle of the night.

If the same happened to you, that might explain why you had more dreams. Generally, the longer you sleep the less dreams you remember. Like, when you wake up right after a dream, it stays with you for a couple seconds.

ive slept with a fan on and white noise on
every night of my life,

I'm a light sleeper
so it keeps me from hearing
everything.

I dream like :yumdumdoodledum: :yumdumdoodledum:

I also have slept with a fan almost every night of my life. If anything I think the white noise would help you, once your body gets used to that noise I think it would filter out other sounds that might normally wake you up or disturb your sleep

Originally posted by Natelcm
Recently since summer has kicked in and it has started to get hot at night I have employed the use of one of our large fans to cool me off. The noise doen't bother me at all infact for some reason it helps me calm down and fall asleep.

Anyways I was wondering if there is a connection with me dreaming very little, or not rembering them to the noise of the fan in my room. Should I discontinue using my fan if I wish to pursue my dreams?

Nate

For one thing you are NOT dreaming very little, you are just not remembering your dreams. The reason the fan helps you sleep is that it generates white noise which helps you not notice distracting sounds. The fan may be hurting your recall in that it helps you sleep deeper, but i would not discontinue fan use, as without it you will not sleep well. What might help is using an alarm, or when you wake up in the morning lie there for a few minutes not moving, trying to remember your dreams.

Perhaps it depends; some people can easily ignore the noise of a fan, while others simple cannot. What exactly is white noise?

Hmm interesting tomorrow morning I will give myself a few seconds before I get up to try and rember my dreams. For me when I wake up, when I am lucky I will rember at most one dream pretty vividly, so far I have never had more than a "glance" at an earlier dream, will this get better with practice?

White noise is, I believe just constant unchanging noise.

Sleeping with a fan helps me immensely. I find complete silence unnerving so the drone of a fan and a movement of air is very calming.

If it is seriously affecting your dreams, it might be because of a change in your sleeping habits, not the fan itself. I think you'd have to give it some time to know for sure. Perhaps white noise does kill your dream recall. It doesn't hurt me, but everyone is unique.

The same thing happens to me when I accidently fall asleep with the TV or the radio on. It's probably because you just recently changed your sleeping habits by adding the fan, and your mind just needs to get used to the noise.

Originally posted by MelodicRipple
Perhaps it depends; some people can easily ignore the noise of a fan, while others simple cannot. What exactly is white noise?

Yeah, as Natelcm said. White noise is constant unchanging noise. But just to add on, it is specifically noise that covers the whole sound spectrum, and is a combination of all the different frequencies of sound, just like white light is a combination of the full light spectrum.

Also, I agree with the analysis that the dream recall loss is caused by a change of sleeping habits. I know if I don't keep a very regular sleep routine, i have almost no recall at all.