We’ve all been taught the golden rule – 8 hours of sleep is key to healthy, well-rested life. However, the number varies slightly on your age, so we like to reference research that recommends getting anywhere from 7-9 hours per night.
For many people, getting in these hours is difficult. You might find that you’re groggy late into the morning, grumpy on your conference calls, or calling it a night as soon as the sunsets. Especially in a post-Covid world, we’ve experienced increased anxiety and insomnia. In a most recent survey, more than half of Americans reported increasing problems sleeping since the start of the pandemic.
A simple way to help get more sleep, so many of us seem to be lacking? Tracking it! With wearable technology and smartwatches, you can find helpful information on your sleep habits and correlate it with the activities you’ve done or food you’ve eaten throughout the day.
Let’s further break down why it’s important to monitor your sleep and how smartwatches get it done.
Benefits of monitoring sleep
Understanding your sleep habits can have nearly endless benefits. In the world of fitness and nutrition, optimized sleep can increase your regulation of appetite, energy use and weight control. Overall, it lessens your likelihood of obesity, diabetes and heart problems. When it comes to mental productivity, there are benefits too. Solid sleep boosts your mood and creativity, as well as improves concentration and memory.
When you invest in a wearable tool that monitors sleep, you gain additional features like fitness tracking and coaching, GPS, and integrations with other wellness apps.
How do smartwatches monitor sleep?
Smart watches with built-in sleep trackers rely on sensors to detect physical signs, like heart rate and body movement. They stay on your wrist throughout the night to gather and measure data.
At a high level, an indication of low body movement (e.g. tossing and turning) is correlated to deeper sleep. However, the science behind this is used loosely and often debated, so it’s recommended to use sleep tracking as a tool but consult with a doctor for the most accurate medical advice.
Smartwatches typically track sleep by collecting information from built-in sensors and analyzing the data through an algorithm. However, more advanced sleep trackers often collect other pertinent data, like respiration and snoring. In addition, these state-of-the-art smartwatches detect room temperatures, noise levels, and other factors that could impact sleep quality.
How to choose the best sleep monitoring smartwatch for you
There are several components of a smartwatch with sleep tracking. Consider these when evaluating the pros and cons of the best wearable technology for your needs.
Elements of Sleep Tracking:
As mentioned, sleep trackers can ingest a wide array of data, from heart rate, heart rate variability, respiration, snoring, time awake, time sleeping, sleep interruptions, body temperature and room conditions. With this much variety, look at the specific product details to find the smartwatch that collects the information you most care about.
Sleep Analytics:
Sleep analytics use the data from sleep tracking to create insights around your sleep patterns and the quality of your sleep. You might get detailed charts that show your sleeping patterns overtime or a daily “sleep score”. If you keep your smartwatch on during the day, the analytics can compare your sleep quality to your daily activity levels.
Value and Price:
The overall value you’re getting from a sleep tracker accounts for much more than the price you pay. It also factors in user-friendliness, additional practical features, and comfort. After all, you’re sleeping with it on! So an expensive sleep tracker that provides helpful insight to help you sleep better may be a better value than a more affordable option that gives you limited information that isn’t important to your goals. Also, keep an eye out for recurring subscription fees with smartwatches. Some come with built-in apps for all the data you want to collect, while others ask you to purchase additional tracking apps.
Comfort:
For most sleepers, comfort is paramount. Just as you’re particular about a firm or soft mattress, you want to be careful about the size, weight and feel of a smartwatch. Make sure you can try it on before you buy, or that the smartwatch has a good return policy in case it’s not quite suitable for your comfort needs. It should fit right in the middle of being too tight and too loose. It should have a large enough display screen to gather the data you want without being so bulky that you feel it in the middle of the night.