Sleep has always been important to me, but especially so since I became chronically ill. A good night of sleep can be the difference, for me, between a day wracked with pain all over my body, fatigue, moodiness, and brain fog, and a day with minimal symptoms. Along with overall stress reduction, getting good sleep as much as possible has become a high-level priority for me as I adjust to life in a sicker, more susceptible body.
Recently I’ve added some new elements into my sleep routine that have made it much easier for me sleep deeply and stay asleep for most of the night. Here are some of my favorite “sleep accessories”…
A great eye mask
I shout about the benefits of eye masks to anyone who asks. I used to think they were just a silly, frivolous item that rich characters wore in movies to signal their decadent lethargy. But they actually help with sleep issues enormously! Sleep doctors recommend them for decreasing the amount of time it takes for you to fall asleep. I also find that they help me stay asleep for longer; my body and brain seem happiest when I wake up around 10:30–11:00 a.m. each day, but the sun tends to disturb my sleep long before that without an eye mask on.
The Nidra Deep Rest mask is my favorite one I’ve ever tried (and I’ve tried several). It has a Velcro-adjustable strap to account for different head sizes and pressure preferences, it is contoured to prevent light from getting in even if you have a big schnoz like mine, and it has hollow “eye cups” that allow for the natural eye-fluttering movements of REM sleep and put less pressure on your eyes (good for folks who want to avoid wrinkles). They did not pay me in any way to say this; I just genuinely love this product, to the point that I take it with me everywhere I travel so I can ensure I’ll sleep well.
Earplugs
I have lived in the downtown core of a major city for several years, and once had a roommate who would have sex at any hour of the day or night and whose sex noises were louder than any I’d ever heard in my life, even in porn… so, of course I’m familiar with the earplugs lifestyle! (Still very glad I left that apartment. Yeesh.)
On the advice of The Wirecutter (a publication that gives good product recommendations but is famously shitty to its employees, so I shan’t link to them), I recently bought a bunch of Mack’s slim-fit soft foam earplugs, and they’re great. You roll ’em up real small between your fingers, stick ’em in your ear, and they puff back up to their original size in there, creating a mild-to-moderate amount of noise reduction. For me, they don’t work well enough on their own (which is why I use a white noise app, below), but when combined with all this other stuff, they’re excellent.
White noise app
I think I am too traumatized, and my nervous system is too fucked up, for me to sleep as deeply as I used to 😂 I just find, these days, that even small noises can jostle me from dreamland. When earplugs weren’t doing enough, I decided I should add a white noise app into the mix.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of these on the App Store, so take your pick! On the advice of my spouse, an app developer with an encyclopedic knowledge of the best apps, I decided to pay the $10 CAD that it cost to get the Dark Noise app. I was finding that a lot of the free white noise apps were cluttered with ads, locked their best stuff behind paywalls, or would crash or pause after several consecutive hours of use; I wanted something that would simply work, and Dark Noise is absolutely doing the trick.
The app has a lot of different sounds at the ready, but the track I play every night when I go to sleep these days is “pink noise,” which is white noise but with its higher frequencies reduced, so that it sounds more like a steady, heavy rainfall. I turn this on at a volume loud enough that I can scarcely hear noises happening elsewhere in the apartment, and keep my phone near my bed while it’s charging all night. The noise is so relaxing and unobtrusive that sometimes I wake up in the morning and go, “Wait, huh? Why did the pink noise get turned off?” and then I realize it’s still on, my ears just got so used to it that they basically filtered it out. Magic.
“Smart home” hub and smart bulbs
I’m aware that lots of people have security concerns around anything “smart home”-related, and also that this stuff is too expensive in a lot of cases, which sucks. But I recently decided to treat myself to a HomePod mini and some smart bulbs for all the lights in my room, figuring that it would make my life easier as a chronically fatigued person if I could control the lights and audio in my room with my voice.
It’s been soooo helpful, I can’t even tell you. There are days when my fatigue is so crushingly intense that even picking up my phone from my nightstand feels like too much effort; it’s on those days that I can ask Siri, through the HomePod, to read me my texts, or reply to them, or play my “Energy” playlist to get me moving, or remind me what deadlines are on my calendar, or turn the lights off so I can take a nap, or turn the lights on so I can wake the fuck up. It has revolutionized my life.
I’ve configured many different “scenes” in my Home app – for example, saying “Hey Siri, bisexual” turns the lights pink and blue, while “Hey Siri, I’m doing my makeup” instantly brightens the lamp closest to my makeup area so I can do my face. Some of these have been super helpful in getting to sleep more easily, particularly one called “I’m going to bed.” When I tell Siri that I am indeed going to bed, she turns off all the lights but one, which she makes a rich shade of purple, and then she plays rain sounds on a speaker. This is the perfect setting for those “wind-down” minutes where I’ve gotten into bed and am reading, or taking one last look at my phone, before settling in for the night. At that point I say, “Hey Siri, good night!” and she turns off all the lights and sounds for me.
An amazingly soft pillow
Pillow preference is as personal as sex toy preference; I can’t tell you what will work for you, but I can tell you what works for me and how that relates to my preferences and needs, so you can figure out whether my recommendation will work for you.
I’m usually a side-sleeper, occasionally a back-sleeper. My neck and shoulders get depressingly sore if I sleep on a pillow that’s too flat. I sometimes feel too hot when I sleep and sometimes too cold. I spend a lot of time reading or writing in bed, so I prefer pillows that are suitable for sleep and sitting-up activities.
The Nest Easy Breather pillow (another Wirecutter recommendation) is the best pillow I’ve ever owned. It’s stuffed with shredded foam, so you can remove however much you want to get your desired fluffiness level, but I’ve left all of it in. It’s simultaneously supportive and soft. Can’t recommend it highly enough!
A fantastic wand vibrator
Okay, this one is kind of a joke… but also kind of not! When I’m feeling too sexually agitated to sleep – or just having trouble sleeping – sometimes a quick orgasm is the best solution. And wands are usually the easiest way for me to achieve that.
My all-time favorite is the Magic Wand Rechargeable; lately I’ve also enjoyed the slightly more petite Zalo Kyro. If you want to lean into the nighttime theme, Bodywand makes a glow-in-the-dark wand for some reason. No idea if it’s any good, but at least you could find it in a hurry if you needed to!
What products help you sleep better?