I Tried a "Brainwave Headband" for Menopausal Sleep—and It Worked

Speak on it, Jo. I can’t be missing sleep while I’ve got a household to run, family to engage with and some sort of community life to maintain. So I charged the headband for its allotted three hours, then downloaded the Elemind app and paired the device with it. The trickiest part of the whole experience was my initial fitting of the headband—the right strap needs to rest against the Occipital Bone, the thick bone just behind your ear, in order to best read your brain waves. The Elemind app shows you if you the headband optimally placed by giving you a green-means-go readout, so you’re not left wondering if it’s in the right place; after a week of using, I could feel that I had it resting correctly.

Truthfully, when I first heard about “neuromodulation” and “brain waves,” my BS meter went to 11. Come on, I thought, this gadget is going to read electrical signals sent by my brain. But indeed it does—or seems to from using it—since the device rests on the skin similar to how an electroencephalogram (EEG for short) is fitted to measure the electrical activity in the brain. The Elemind quickly measures your brain waves, then using AI technology creates acoustic stimulation to counter those waves. You know how noise cancelling headphones emit a whoosh to counter the outside noises you’re hearing? That’s what Elemind does, except for the racing thoughts in our head.

The front half of the headband is covered in a super-soft synthetic that feels like neoprene and rests comfortably mid-forehead. The adjustable elastic on the back of the headband is easy to tighten or, and it never loosened or became dislodged during my two weeks’ test. Also, while the design looks clunky, it didn’t slip off my head even tho I toss and turn repeatedly during the night.

What’s Elemind Sound Like?

Ah, the secret sauce. There’s a sample sound on the device’s web site which with a bit of variation sounded like my Elemind. As I was sitting in the dark, eyes closed (the brain wave-reading tech requires your eyes to be closed for proper reading) with this off device making strange noises, I asked myself: “What am I hearing right now?” Truthfully, it recalled the time I had a mouse stuck in my closet, hearing someone sweep the porch and light rain. But then, in keeping with the spirit of the thing, I tried to clear away my thoughts, breathe deeply and just listen to the noises. I’m yawning now just thinking back to how sleepy this made me, and the next thing I knew, it was the next day and I was waking up in my bed with a headband on. All in all, I’d sum up the audio as “strange, but non-offensive” and startlingly effective in getting me to sleep.

Elemind’s own clinical trials report that 76 percent of participants fell asleep faster when using Elemind. On average, they fell asleep 48 percent faster; the maximum improvement was a 74 percent reduction in the time it took to fall asleep. For me, the real eureka moment I had with Elemind was when I used it at 3 a.m. when I awoke one night and started in with my racing thoughts—a sort of whirligig spiral that included but was not limited to the bills, the dog dental appointment, the garage clean-out, natural disasters, political instability, skin laxity. Rather than continue that endless anxiety loop, I opted instead to open the Elemind app and hit the large “get back to sleep” prompt, which started the clicking sound. In previous middle-night wakefulness episodes, I was awake for hours, but when I listened to Elemind, I was asleep in less than a half-hour.