Imagine you falling asleep at 11 pm and waking up at 7 am, this is 8 hours of solid rest that your body needs, so why do you still feel weak and tired during the day? Good question. It could be because you are not getting asleep which is deep enough to really suit your body and mind. In this article, we explore a comprehensive list of the best ways to track your sleep.
1. Use a smartphone:
Even if it is best to not take technology into the bedroom, the truth is almost everyone has that phone socket close to the bedside table for charging while you sleep. It replaces alarm clocks these days too.
Must Read: How To Use Android And iOS Apps To Help You Sleep
If you are sleeping with your device already, just use it to track your sleep. There are various apps that make use of your device’s accelerometer or sonar waves emitted to detect movement. You just need to have your smartphone beside you.
When you wake up, you can use it to confirm how long you slept and how frequently you moved as you slept, they help you to know if your sleep is not deep enough and if there are obstructions.
Useful apps to check out are SleepScore (It is an app for Android and iOS), Sleep Cycle (Android and iOS) and Sleep Time (Android and iOS).
2. Fitness trackers:
To have a deeper understanding of how well you sleep or if you move around a lot in the middle of the night, a fitness tracker can make it happen. Most of these devices possess features to track sleep. Fitbit models, the Apple Watch, the Motiv Ring and so on, all monitor sleep efficiency by measuring your movement in the middle of the night.
3. Smart beds and sensors:
If you really want to track your sleep, a smart mattress or dedicated sleep sensors like the iFit Sleep HR or Eight Sleep Tracker can get it done.
Must Read: 10 Best Baby Sleep Apps for Android
Sensors fit under or over your bed to detect movement and heart and respiratory rates. This data will let you know how soon you fell asleep and how long you spent in every cycle of sleep throughout the night.
Smart mattresses have identical features, but they also come with heating and cooling modes.
More Information About Sleep
Sleep is a naturally recurring state of mind and body, characterized by altered consciousness, relatively inhibited sensory activity, reduced muscle activity and inhibition of nearly all voluntary muscles during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and reduced interactions with surroundings. It is distinguished from wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli, but more reactive than a coma or disorders of consciousness, with sleep displaying very different and active brain patterns.
Sleep occurs in repeating periods, in which the body alternates between two distinct modes: REM sleep and non-REM sleep. Although REM stands for “rapid eye movement”, this mode of sleep has many other aspects, including virtual paralysis of the body.
A well-known feature of sleep is the dream, an experience typically recounted in narrative form, which resembles waking life while in progress, but which usually can later be distinguished as fantasy.
During sleep, most of the body’s systems are in an anabolic state, helping to restore the immune, nervous, skeletal, and muscular systems; these are vital processes that maintain mood, memory, and cognitive function, and play a large role in the function of the endocrine and immune systems.
The internal circadian clock promotes sleep daily at night. The diverse purposes and mechanisms of sleep are the subject of substantial ongoing research. Sleep is a highly conserved behavior across animal evolution.
Humans may suffer from various sleep disorders, including dyssomnias such as insomnia, hypersomnia, narcolepsy, and sleep apnea; parasomnias such as sleepwalking and Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder; bruxism; and circadian rhythm sleep disorders. The advent of artificial light has substantially altered sleep time
There you have it – a comprehensive list of the best ways to track your sleep. If you have other recommendations, feel free to drop them in the comment section below.