Rings, watches, or mats, which use movement as a proxy, simply aren’t reliable enough. It seems accurate: it told me I slept for about seven hours most nights, switching between deep, light, and REM sleep, with a few stretches of being fully awake.īut unless a device is monitoring your brain activity, it cannot actually tell what stage of sleep you are in, says psychologist Elizabeth Woodward. The data is presented in a series of dashboards in a slick app. It’s less cumbersome than wearing a smart watch. Intended to be worn 24/7, it carries an accelerometer that monitors movement, sensors to track your temperature, and infrared LEDs that measure your heart rate. It’s a sensor-packed, chunky band you wear on your finger. I needed something that tracked me, and only me. The mat did yield a lot of data, but none of it was very useful, because it couldn’t distinguish between my husband and me. That first night, acutely aware that my sleep (or lack of it) would be tracked and scored, I tossed and turned, repeatedly thinking about the data that would be produced. It uses embedded pressure sensors to track how long and how deeply you sleep, your heart rate, and your snoring (there’s a microphone inside the mat, which I switched off after the first night-no thanks). One of the best-selling mats is made by French firm Withings. One of the easiest ways to do this is a sleep-tracking mat you place under your mattress. But the idea is compelling, especially for tech-minded types, so I decided tracking was where I should start. I’d never actually logged my sleep this way instead I relied on doing rough calculations in my head. If you don’t know that, how can you be sure whether you really have a problem? “We suggest people use a sleep diary or use technology to track their sleep,” says Twery.Īs a general rule, sleep trackers use your movement as a proxy to estimate how much of the night you spent asleep. If you go to a medical professional complaining of insomnia, one of the first questions they will ask is exactly how much you sleep. That’s where sleep-tracking gadgets can help. So how do you know you’re getting the “right” kind? Good sleep also involves sleep “efficiency”: being asleep for the majority of the time spent in bed. That’s because the cycles differ as the night goes on: early cycles include more deep sleep, and we have more REM sleep in the latter stages. A full sleep cycle completes every 90 minutes, and we need about five of these cycles a night to be properly rested. The type of sleep is important too: we need a mix of deep, light, and REM sleep (rapid eye movement-the last stage before you wake up). What we do know is that it’s not just the amount of sleep that counts. For example, we have no idea why some people sleep well and others badly, says Jamie Zeitzer, associate professor at Stanford University’s center for sleep sciences and medicine. “When you disrupt your sleep over the long term, it starts to erode your health in many, many ways,” says Michael Twery, director of the US National Center on Sleep Disorders Research.īeyond that, we understand surprisingly little about sleep.
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