Should you use a smartwatch to track your sleep?

The benefits of tracking your sleep via smart watches are plenty, particularly if those midnight trips to the loo are becoming a habit.

Smartwatches are amazing, did you know they double as fall detector? Read more here

If you’re anything like us, or 35% of Australia’s adult population, sleep can be a bit of trial at times. But to get a better idea of exactly how much uninterrupted sleep you’re getting why not keep a record? No, we’re not suggesting a ‘dear diary’ sort of affair, more like a wearable device such as a smart watch.

When you should consider tracking your sleep?

As we said, more than 35% of Australians report having interrupted sleep every night, so you’re not the only one, not by any means. If you’re unsure whether you sit in that 35% ask yourself these questions:

• Are you exhausted throughout the day?
• Do you wake up frequently during the night?
• Do you feel more anxious than usual?
   

If you’ve answered yes to any of the above questions it might be time to get yourself a sleep tracker like a smart watch. They give you a detailed snapshot of your night and determine exactly how much sleep you’re actually getting. Once you’ve got the information, you can relay this to your doctor where it might help with diagnosis and treatment.

Why tracking sleep is good for you

We may be splitting hairs here, but isn’t sleep something everyone wants more of?

Sleep is vital for our health. Sleep interruptions and exhaustion could mean that there is something a little bit weird going on with our bodies. So, if you get yourself a shiny new smart watch and notice that your sleep isn’t tracking the way you thought, you could be suffering from insomnia, sleep apnoea or another sleep disorder like periodic limb movement disorder. If you notice something’s up, you can show your doctor what your clever little smart watch has been up to.

How does it work?

Right we’ve covered the why now here comes the how. Smart watches like the apple watch use apps to monitor your sleep in three ways:

The first way is by monitoring your heart rate. As your pulse is a lot slower during REM, anything quickened may signal that you’re not sleeping. When the smartwatch is strapped to your wrist it uses something called photoplethysmography or PPG to measure your heart rate. The tech works by flashing both red and green lights very quickly on your wrist. The red light reflects off the blood while the green light is absorbed by it. When the heart is beating blood-flow increases and therefore absorbs more green light. The watch reads this and can then accurately calculate the number of times the heart beats each minute.

The second is motion sensing, so if you’re moving around a lot or getting up a lot at night the smart watch will feel it and log it. Using multiaxis inertial sensors called accelerometers, smart watches can detect when it’s moving. Gyroscopes are also used in some smart watches to determine rotational movement and direction.

And the third is tracking the duration of sleep. All the information above gets compiled in the app for analysis which gets converted into an hourly figure.

Apple is changing it up

In some devices, Apple has opted for a gentle reminder, like an alarm, to tell you when it’s time to go to bed. It’s like having your mum strapped to your wrist. The advantage of this is to encourage healthy habits before you fall asleep and tone down any information overload.

If this sounds like a little bit of you, you can check out our awesome selection of smart watches for yourself. It’ll help you get the zzzzzzs in no time.