I love sleep. I don’t know about the rest of you, but the prospect of climbing into bed and shutting my brain down for a while is a great way to reset after a tough day.
Sleep feels great. It’s a completely different state of being that lets the stress of the day just vanish for a while, and man oh man is that a nice feeling.
Stress, though, is one of those things that can overbalance and keep you from getting your well-earned rest. Some days are just punishing and leave your head spinning, some days something stressful happens that keeps your brain moving at night, and sometimes it’s just the daily news cycle that haunts you well into the evening hours. Stress absolutely keeps me awake and I’ll bet it keeps you up too sometimes.
How do we counteract all that stress? Scrolling. There’s an interesting phenomenon called “revenge bedtime procrastination” that made way too much sense to me when I read about it. According to sleepfoundation.org, “Revenge bedtime procrastination” is when people intentionally stay up late to enjoy personal time, even when they know it will negatively affect their sleep. It often happens when individuals feel they have little control over their daily schedules. For me it’s a subconscious way of making up for the heavy adult lifting that I do all day. I’ll flop down on the couch and put on a YouTube video, or I’ll finally start going through all the reels my buddy is always endlessly sending me. Of course, I know all these unproductive late night shenanigans will leave me more tired.
It’s crazy, trying to figure out what to do about your bad habits. I wish I was the sort of person who could just recognize my faults and address them head on without help, but I am not that guy. I need help, and my help usually comes from handy products I find online! (Ok, so this also might be a fault of mine but let’s just ignore that for the time being.) I wanted to find something that would help me tune out all the noise in my head, distract me from the siren song of doomscrolling and help lull me to sleep. My solution? The Dreamegg!
A Clear Head in a Box
I ordered it on Amazon and it came super fast! It was so much smaller than I imagined, even seeing the videos, I guess it just looked bigger. It’s a little circular speaker about 3 inches across with a speaker that circles the whole thing. It weighs practically nothing and even at such a small size it can put out a good amount of sound! It also has there three little lights at the top that shine up onto your ceiling, but we’ll get to those in a bit. Let’s talk about why I think the sound part works so well.
First, we need to talk about white noise. There are a few reasons why steady noise frequencies like white, brown and pink noise can help the mind calm and sleep, but it really comes down to two things. There’s something called sound masking. Sudden changes in noise are what usually pull your brain’s attention. A quiet room followed by a loud hallway noise is way more disruptive than a room with a steady fan sound or something like that running in the background. White noise smooths those changes out so your brain is less likely to fully wake up or stay alert waiting for the next sound. Next, consistent repetitive sound can be really calming, it gives the brain less to actively process. It creates sort of a neutral background sound layer that can make racing thoughts settle down a little, especially at night when your brain wants to replay every thing you heard on the news or all the frustrating nonsense your boss put you through that day.
So yeah, white noise is really helpful for getting and staying asleep because it muffles the brain noise a little. The Dreamegg Portable has 5 noise settings, three are colored noise and one is a fireplace crackle, the last is sort of a white noise wave pattern. Pretty solid selections, really. If that doesn’t do it for you, there are 4 music settings. One of them is Brahms’ lullaby which is just insanely annoying and earwormy, but 8 out of 9 is a good win streak in my books so I’ll let that slide. Just the sounds would have been good enough for me, but then I fiddled around with the lights.
Just Keep Breathing
The Dreamegg Portable has three little LED lights in the center of the device that shine soft pools of yellow, red and green light onto your ceiling. Now here’s where I get to sound all smart, because I do a little writing for a sleep health foundation and I know all about the importance of light to the body’s sleep mechanisms. There is a little cluster of super specialized cells in your brain right behind the eyes called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (let’s call it the SCN for short). What these cells do is central to how our bodies always seem to adjust to a day/night cycle of sleep, and that’s because they absorb and translate light data into hormone cycles in the brain. Basically, if the brain gets the right light signals (like the colors of a sunset changing to low-light) it tells the brain to start releasing all the hormones that help us get to sleep. These little lights on the Dreamegg are in the correct colors to help trigger that signal! On top of that, you can set them on a timer, and make them dim and brighten in a slow pattern for you to match your breathing to. It is honestly the most relaxing thing I’ve experienced short of a good massage. The combination of the lights and the sounds instantly solved my sleep woes and have been helping me to sleep better for a while now. My partner also loves it, as she has always fallen asleep with the TV on in the background in the past and this is a really nice middle ground (because I will NOT have the TV running all night in my house!) This little thing is a life saver, and I’m planning to upgrade to the larger model soon!
TL;DR Specs for the Skimmers
Here are the basic specs of the device for those of you who want the very least reading.
- Portable white noise sound machine
- 4-7-8 guided breathing light
- 9 built-in soothing sounds including
- White noise
- Brown noise
- Pink noise
- Ocean waves
- Campfire
- Piano & nature sounds
- Meditation tones
- Brahms’ lullaby
- 1500mAh rechargeable battery
- USB rechargeable
- 3.0 × 3.0 × 1.34 inches
- Weight – 0.228 lbs
- Compact travel-friendly design
- Guided visual breathing light
The Long and Short of It
So obviously this is a big thumbs up from me. I love that I can take it anywhere and for a discount price of $36.79 it can’t be beat! The only reason I’m thinking of upgrading to their larger model is for a better speaker and the alarm function. Even if you’re skeptical about noise machines, this one is so easy to use and so cheap, I can’t imagine a reason why you shouldn’t at least try it out! If you have trouble sleeping, this could be just the thing to help you sleep better!
About the Author:
George Berger
Ever since a young George was disappointed with a toy that did match up to the advertising, he became a tireless advocate for consumers. He’ll review anything that folks have to spend their hard-earned dollars on. George is grateful that he gets to use his skills as a writer and an artist to help connect with consumers and help them make the best decisions possible.
This article is for informational purposes only and reflects the author’s independent opinion. Readers should verify details directly with the manufacturer or retailer before making a purchase decision.
