Monitoring Sleep Stages
It is possible to monitor your sleep stages (sleep cycles) to determine the optimal time for waking up so that you are fresh and ready for the day. The SleepTracker Pro sleep monitoring watch is a health gadget that can do just that and wake your up at just the right time.SleepTracker Pro Sleep Monitoring Watch
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What is it? It is a gadget that resembles a watch both in form and function, with the exception that you wear it overnight while sleeping and it monitors your sleep stages and wakes you up at your optimal "almost-awake moment". Unlike an ordinary alarm clock which wakes you up at a set time, regardless of whether at that moment you are in deep sleep or not, the SleepTracker Pro monitors how deep you are sleeping and chooses the best time (within a certain time window of your preferred wake up time) to sound the alarm. This ensures that you wake up refreshed.
How does it work? To understand how this gadget works, it is important to understand sleep cycles (see diagram below).
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Most people go through 4 or 5 sleep cycles during an 8 hour sleep period, with each cycle lasting about 90-110 minutes and consisting of 5 stages.
- Stage 1: Drowsiness
- Stage 2: Light sleep
- Stages 3 & 4: Deep sleep. Known also as Delta sleep. Your body rests and rebuilds itself during these stages.
- REM (rapid eye movement) stage: Breathing and brain activity increase, and you also get rapid eye movements. Dream often occurs at this stage.
In the early sleep cycles, the Delta sleep stages last longer than the REM stages. In the later cycles, the REM stages lengthen, whereas the Delta sleep stages decrease and eventually disappear (see diagram above). Each sleep cycle has multiple almost-awake moments when you are naturally closest to waking and these are the times when you want to be woken up. For SleepTracker Pro to do its job, all you need to do is:
- Set your preferred waking time (say 6:00 a.m.).
- Set an alarm window (say 30 minutes). An alarm window is the time (duration) before your preferred waking time that you are happy to be woken up.
In this example, SleepTracker Pro identifies an almost-awake moment within your alarm window (i.e. sometime between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m.) and wakes you up when you are most alert. This way you wake up feeling refreshed instead of tired and sleepy!
What are the main features of the SleepTracker Pro sleep monitoring watch?
- Digital watch with time and date.
- Vibrating or ringing alarm or both.
- It monitors your sleep and wakes you at an optimal almost-awake moment.
- Alarm window (see explanation above) can be set up to 90 minutes.
- A chronological list of the previous night's almost-awake moments can be reviewed. It also calculates Data A i.e. the average time between your almost-awake moments.
- PC software to track your sleep patterns so that you can analyse why during some nights you have better sleep compared to others. Data download to PC via USB.
- Backlight
- Water resistant
The so-called Data A is an interesting piece of information. It can tell you how well you have been sleeping. Generally:
- A longer Data A reading than normal = a particularly restful sleep
- A shorter Data A reading = a particularly restless night
You can then look back at what you did preceding those restful and restless nights to help you identify the factors which influence your sleeping patterns. Things like alcohol, cigarettes, late evening exercise, eating late, and spicy foods can all affect your Data A and hence the quality of your sleep.
What are the benefits of using this health gadget?
- You will wake up refreshed instead of tired.
- You can understand your sleep patterns better and identify relevant factors affecting them.
- It is ideal for leisure travelers, people on business trips, parents of young children, people working on shifts, students with morning classes and anyone else with irregular schedules.
SleepTracker Pro is a health gadget that has received very favorable reviews
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