Crash course to tracking your daily sleep – Noise

Ever so often, do you find yourself lying awake at night, trying to force yourself to sleep? You may have an exam or big meeting early next morning, but to your dismal, sleep always evades you until the first rays of dawn.

Rather than showing up unprepared and mentally absent, focus on improving your nightly sleeping regime for an energized and productive day. From fitness bands, to smart wearables and bed side trackers, technology is paving the way to elevate your daily sleeping habits. Hop on the bandwagon, with a crash course on effectively tracking your daily sleep.

What do sleep trackers monitor?

The question may arise, what aspect of sleep do such trackers actually monitor? While different devices tend to assess different sleep patterns, it bodes well to know first-hand the scope of such sleep tracking.

Sleep Duration: From the moment you truly fall into slumber to rising in the morning, a tracker gages your time spent inactive.

Sleep quality: Assessing every interruption and making notes when you toss and turn in bed, it records whenever your sleep is broken.

Sleep phases: Differentiating between light, deep and REM sleep, certain sleep trackers such as the ColorFit Pro 2, can examine different sleep phases.

Environmental triggers: From the temperature in your bedroom to the amount of blue light exposure, you can reduce non-conducive sleep stimuli with their aid.

Lifestyle choices: Taking into account your habits and regime, a tracker prompts you on sedentary choices. It can let you set customizable reminders to restrict caffeine consumption, or keep away from similar anti-sleep stimulants during night time.

Identifying different stages of sleep

Knowing how your body passes through different sleep cycles can help in assessing daily sleep quality. This can help in making the necessary changes to improve sleep in the long term.

-Stage 1: This is the lightest stage of sleep during which you can wake easy, and typically lasts for a few minutes.

-Stage 2: This is a progression of the first stage. Sleep is still fairly light, as your brain waves start slowing down.

-Stage 3 to 4: Through each stage, you fall deeper into sleep which becomes harder to interrupt. During this time your body gets revitalized and immune function gets boosted.

-Stage 5 or REM: In the last stage known as REM (rapid eye movement), you begin to dream as brain activity increases. Long term memories and information is processed during this stage.

When to consider tracking your sleep?

While everyone can reap the benefits of tracking their sleep with a reliable smartwatch or bed side tracker, consider opting for such monitoring if the following pointers seem familiar to you.

Frequent nightly interruptions: Regardless whether you are interrupted by a loud, snoring spouse, or the constant crying of the baby; chronic obstructive sleep can lead to certain sleeping disorders such as periodic limb movement or sleep apnea.

Drowsy through the day: If you often feel the urge to sleep through the day time, you may be going through a bout of insomnia or obstructive sleep apnea. This can lead to a lack of energy and sluggish movement during the day time. By improving the quality of REM sleep you can restore your nightly schedule.

Lowered performance levels: Whether you are a blue collar worker or a semi-pro athlete – to increase your daily efficiency and performance, tracking long term sleep can give you insight into your natural sleep tendencies, and shed light on your average amount of overtime sleep. A healthy sleeping regime can bolster your memory, concentration levels and general mood.

Using technology to track daily sleep

Wearables

With an increasing number of people sporting smart wearables on their wrist, optimizing your sleeping routine via dedicated tracking is the way forward. Tracking your sleep is only one among the several benefits of such technology. From monitoring your heart rate to checking blood oxygen levels, its application is immense.

Fitness bands and GPS smartwatches are the front runners when it comes to wearables to measure sleep quality. Providing comprehensive data on the number of hours clocked in, to measuring your sleep cycle, and prompting you to reduce distractions; wearables can help identify holes in long term sleep, to take the right action early.

Apps

While there are several dedicated application that claim to track how you sleep, finding the right one is imperative. It will bode you well to opt for an app that syncs well with your sleep tracker. If you are going with a smartwatch such as the ColorFit Nav, downloading the NoiseFit app on either Android or iOS, well give you the opportunity to further both your sleep and fitness goals. Such an app can give you detailed reports on your daily sleep, while tracking long term patterns and prompting you to get more sleep if you are depriving yourself.

By tracking your sleep and getting quality rest at night, you can elevate your overall health and be more productive in the long term.