Can Tracking Your Sleep Help You Improve It

We all know the benefits of a good night’s sleep and yet many people are in need of sleep help in order to get it on a regular basis. Normally we’d advise against smartphones and backlit screens before bed, but there would be a few exceptions, such as sleep monitoring apps.

Today’s technology can help us keep better track of our health. Smartphone apps can count calories, log the number of miles we run, and even help us sleep better.

Some sleep monitoring apps require you to purchase additional tracking devices that can be costly, but there are some that don’t require a tracker at all. These apps will usually use the sensors built into your smartphone and are a convenient way to keep track of your sleeping habits. This can be of great benefit in finding out where you need the most sleep help.

Sleep Apps that Track Your Sleep

Sleep apps have been designed to provide white noise and peaceful nature sounds, to help you remember your dreams, and guide you through stress-relief exercises, but sleep tracker apps, which provide you with detailed information about your entire night’s sleep, are the most popular ones.

These apps work by capturing data from a heart rate monitor and your phone’s microphone to monitor your quality of sleep. In the morning the app will analyze your data, after which you receive a personalized report with recommendations about improving your slumber.

The goal is to identify the problem areas of your sleep cycle, such as waking up due to snoring or staying awake past bedtime because of stress, and, ultimately, to help you resolve those issues.

What are the benefits?

Some of the benefits of using sleep tracking apps include:

1. If you have sleep problems that require collecting data about your slumber habits, you can avoid spending the night in a sleep lab. The traditional approach to collecting data about sleep habits, called polysomnography, involves the subject sleeping in a clinic hooked up to data collection machines. While the data collected in this manner is highly detailed, the data collected by sleep tracking is also quite accurate and allows the subject to sleep more comfortably in familiar surroundings. A sleep specialist can then use the data collected by an app to help assess a patient’s sleep issues.

2. Apps keep an automated and very accurate sleep journal for you. Keeping a sleep diary is an important way to gather information about insomnia and other sleep-related problems. But it takes a high level of commitment to record the necessary information every morning. Many people find it more convenient to use a sleep journal created by an app.

3. Most sleep tracker apps have a smart alarm that rouses you when your sleep is the lightest. By getting up when your body is ready rather than being jolted awake from a deep slumber, you can avoid feeling groggy and grumpy during the first hour you’re up.

What are the cons?

While it is great to see people becoming more aware of the intricacies of sleep and their own sleeping habits, in some cases it causes unnecessary worry and concern.

Recent research shows that tracking your sleep could be doing more harm than good. There is even a brand new name for it: orthosomnia.

Orthosomnia describes people who obsess over the results of their sleep and fitness trackers. Unfortunately, unlike eating five portions of fruit and vegetables or exercising daily, you can’t make yourself sleep for eight hours. And if people start putting pressure on themselves to sleep better, the likelihood is that they won’t.

Stress and anxiety are the main culprits in why we don’t sleep well, so tracking sleep can create unnecessary anxiety in the bedroom. Anxiety produces alert hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that will keep you awake. Plus, having “tech” in the bedroom goes against our general sleep advice of removing electronic devices from the bedroom and switching off screens an hour before bedtime.

If you do choose to use a smartphone to monitor your sleep, you can opt for a mattress that shields you from the harmful electromagnetic waves emitted by devices. Our WHISPER mattress, for instance, comes with a grounding field that keeps waves out, giving your brain the rest it deserves.

Compile the data

Gathering all of this sleep data is only useful if you actually use it. After several nights of tracking your sleep, you’ll end up with information on how much “deep” vs. “light” sleep you’re getting, how often you move or wake up, time spent in each sleep cycle or — in some cases — how much you snore.

Unfortunately, most sleep apps and fitness trackers don’t give you much advice on how to make changes to your sleep habits based on that data.

So here are some causes of common sleep issues:

If you’re not hitting the number of hours you need: It’s time to adjust your bedtime or wake up call.

If you’re sleeping, but not getting much deep sleep: It could mean your bedroom is too hot or cold, or that you need to cut back on caffeine or alcohol. You might also have underlying sleep conditions, like sleep apnea or insomnia.

If you wake up a lot at night or toss and turn: It could mean you’re experiencing a lot of heat while sleeping, that caffeine or alcohol is interfering with your sleep, or that you need a new mattress.

Conclusion

Getting good quality sleep is an important part of your health regimen. Insufficient sleep is a public health epidemic and chronic sleep deprivation contributes to illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and depression. Apps and sensors can help you understand what’s happening while you’re asleep, but they aren’t stand-ins for going to the doctor.

Another way to make sure that you are getting sufficient quality sleep is to find the ideal mattress for the curvature of your spine. It helps you sleep soundly, and it does not do damage to your tissues, muscles, and ligaments.

But it is worth mentioning, that if you’re waking up exhausted all the time or having trouble staying awake during the day, you should get checked out for any underlying issues.

To check out the WHISPER mattress and get started on your journey to the best night’s sleep of your life, check out the link below. We offer a 100-night risk-free trial: