Insomnia - best ear buds for side sleeper and what to listen to

[superstar63]

I find it very hard to sleep despite following all the rules and doing 10k steps most days and wake often in the night, especially after getting up for a wee it can be impossible to get back to sleep.

I am not good at tech but have iphone and ipad and do i need to download something into phone/ipad and if i use iphone do i have the sound turned down so i am not getting dings with emails but if so how do I hear the podcast/meditation/hypnosis etc?

I am a side sleeper so what sort of ear buds do I need please. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks

No idea about ear buds but you can turn your phone notifications off (look in the settings) - it must be super annoying to have it pinging away all the time anyway!
I listen to audio books on the Libby app (free access via your local library) and put them on a sleep timer.

I dont think any kind of ear buds are good for side sleepers. If you reliably sleep on one side, you could try a single ear bud in your upper ear. Otherwise there are snoozebands but I've never tried one. I sleep alone so I just listen through the phone speaker.

I use BBC Sounds app as it offers pretty much anything I might like.

I suggest a blue light filter (I use Twilight) for using a screen at night (and indeed before bed).

I have one of those head bands with earphones - much comfier than ear buds. I listen to YouTube videos like the Sleepy Scientist. I have YouTube premium for exactly this purpose, as I can a) switch the screen off while listening and b) get no adverts. It's made an enormous difference to my sleep!

I listen to thunderstorms, so relaxing

You need a Snoozeband. They are very comfortable. Also very good at blocking out the light in the summer.

You can buy these on temu for under a tenner.i couldn't cope without mine

I use a snooze band (tried a cheap version previously but it wasn’t as comfortable) and listen to audiobooks on a timer setting - only challenge is having to rewind back next time to find the point where I nodded off.

Before you buy special sleep earphones, give this a try (this is what I do) - when lying on side on pillow, punch a small indent in the pillow where your earbud is digging in. It works for me and I can comfortably listen using earbuds whilst on my side for hours!

I listen to audiobooks in bed all the time - I use the “timer” function on Audible so it doesn’t play on all night and lose where I’m up to (and you can check your listen log so it’s easy to keep track). I just listen to whatever book I’m listening to at the moment and replay it in the shower in the morning if I missed a chunk! My mum is also quite insomniac but she listens to relaxing books she knows v well so it doesn’t matter if she misses some; or to podcasts.

I always used to have one AirPod in one ear but it got a bit uncomfortable if I ended up leaning on it so after ages I tried various “sleep headphones” with a flatter profile. I didn’t at all fancy the snoozeband as I don’t want anything wrapping around my head at night!

These earbuds work great at night: https://amzn.eu/d/0gY7wm9X

They’re pretty light and a bit plasticky feeling, BUT they’re v comfortable (I can lie on my side with one in that ear and it’s completely fine) and the battery lasts sooo much longer than my AirPods when they’re in my ears. And they don’t announce when the battery is low - I tried one set designed as sleep headphones and as soon as battery was running out it announced loudly BATTERY LOW! in my ear at 4am. (They didn’t do that if you had two in but they did with only one, so annoying!).
I’d recommend the ones I linked - sound quality is not wonderful for music but it’s totally fine for spoken word, and they work as sleep ear buds.

I have tried a Snoozeband but found it annoying around my head and it is a good idea to just put one ear bud in the upper ear. Will look into all the suggestions, thanks

I use the Apple wired earphones, I can sleep with them in, I do usually only wear one in my left ear as I sleep on my right side. I got the wired ones because I was worried the wireless ones would fall out in the bed and I’d never find them in the night.

I use Apple EarPods, and I listen to non fiction books, @superstar63 - usually history. I find the historian Dan Jones’ voice to be especially soporific. Plus his books are interesting and well written.

I’ve been listening to Michael sealy on YT, he has lots and lots of sleep hypnosis tapes. They are a bit peculiar, but they definitely send me to sleep very quickly!

Driving in the rain is my absolute favourite type of white noise.

I still have my Phillips Kokoon headset which was specifically designed for this and were really comfy but it was a partnership between Kokoon and Phillips, and Kokoon went bust and the app stopped working so can't recommend that.

What I do is to wear my Shokz bone-conduction headphones in bed positioning them over my head like an Alice band and arranging my pillows so that the weight of my head doesn't rest where the speaker is.