Sleep is a vital part of our daily lives. We spend almost one-third of our lifetime asleep. However, for many people, getting the right amount of sleep or enjoying sleep of good enough quality is a tough one to achieve.
Since many people suffer from restless nights, there’s a ton of recommendations and information out there on how to get quality sleep, but how can you know for sure if these recommendations are working for you?
That’s where sleep monitoring comes in. In this article, you will learn ways how to monitor sleep and how it affects your rest and overall health. Whether you prefer tracking your sleep using a sleep diary or a sleep monitor, tracking your sleep activity can help you make smarter lifestyle choices.
Understanding What Sleep Monitoring Is All About
Sleep monitoring is where you record the quantity and quality of your sleep each night. By tracking your sleep, you can assess how well you are sleeping and how much it can affect your daily life. You can track your sleep through several devices, from wearable smartwatches to headbands that provide biofeedback, rings you wear on your finger, a device you slip under your sheet, or apps that use motion detection and microphones to detect when you’re in different stages of sleep.
Sleep monitors often track the following physiological categories:
- Heart rate
- Respiration
- Blood pressure
- Body temperature
- Body movements
Here are more ways how to monitor sleep for a more accurate understanding of your sleep activity.
The Simplest Method: Keeping a Sleep Diary
If you’re struggling to sleep and can’t understand why, you can use a sleep diary to monitor your sleep patterns. Sometimes your sleep problems are a result of your bad sleep habits, such as not exercising, poor sleep hygiene, or drinking too much caffeine in daytime.
If you use a sleep diary, you will be asked to record what time you went to bed and what time you woke up. Being aware of your diet, alcohol and caffeine intake, exercise, and medications you take, and if and when you feel tired or sleepy throughout the day, may all be included.
Start monitoring with a sleep diary as soon as you begin to recognize a problem in your sleep, and make sure that you complete it for over two weeks. You will need this if you need to see a healthcare professional about your sleep issues, and you’ll have evidence of your sleep-wake pattern, which can help with a diagnosis and treatment.
Leveraging Your Smartphone for Sleep Tracking
Today, one of the easiest ways to learn how to monitor sleep is by using your smartphone. The iOS and Google Play Store apps offer a wide variety of sleep monitor apps with a range of functionality. Sleep Cycle, Sleep Time, and SleepBot, and other similar sleeping apps, can help you gather information about your sleep activity. Before going to bed, you simply put your phone, with the sleep-tracking app running, under your pillow. The phone will track your body movement during your sleep.
However, your sleep-tracker app cannot differentiate between movements on different types of mattresses or between your movements and those of your partner, thus providing the least reliable results from other, more advanced technological devices.
Exploring Wearable Technology: Smartwatches and Fitness Trackers
Most smartwatches and fitness trackers in the market have some basic health and activity trackers. The devices are equipped with blood pressure and heart rate monitors, multiple activity trackers, stress trackers, and even sleep trackers.
These wearable devices track your sleep by using different methods such as actigraphy, which is movement detection or heart rate detection. This movement allows the device to detect your movement to track your sleep activities. It uses the gyroscope or accelerometer to track your movements and also detect which stage of the sleep cycle you are in.
Some smartwatches and trackers use heart rate sensors to monitor your heart rate reading. Your heart rate decreases while sleeping and varies when you’re in different stages of the sleep cycle.
Most people wear smartwatches and rely on their fitness trackers to measure their sleeping patterns. Here’s what these devices track during your sleep:
- Sleep quality
The duration of your sleep in each sleep cycle is what measures the quality of your sleep. A sleep tracker can tell you the number of times your sleep was interrupted and many other things.
- Sleep duration
By recording the time you fell asleep and when you woke up, the sleep tracker helps you determine how long you slept during the night.
- Sleep phases
Sleep trackers can also gauge your sleep cycles, including rapid and non-rapid eye movement phases.
- Sleep environment
Some sleep trackers can also record your sleep environment and how comforting it is.
- Lifestyle
Sleep trackers also give you space for various activities you can do during the day that allow them to measure the external factors that might or might not affect your sleep.
Dedicated Sleep Monitoring Devices for Deeper Insights
If you want more accurate results on how to monitor sleep, you can try using sleep monitoring devices. Sleep monitoring devices might not fix your sleep overnight, but they can help you figure out what’s going on when you sleep at night. Dedicated sleep monitoring devices such as rings, headbands, and on-mattress sensors can help you gain deeper insights into your sleep patterns and have a better understanding of how your daily activities affect your sleep.
Decoding the Data: What Your Sleep Report Means
When learning how to monitor sleep, you also need to understand what your sleep analysis is telling you. Most reports from sleep apps or devices include these key metrics:
- Sleep Efficiency
Sleep efficiency tracks how long you’re sleeping in each sleep stage and the total number of times you wake up in the night. Your result will be influenced by the time you’re spending in bed awake vs. sleeping, your total sleep time, and the time spent in deep sleep and REM stages.
Sleep Stages
These are the four sleep cycles:
- Stage 1: A light stage of sleep where you can still be easily woken up. In this stage, your muscles start to relax, and your heart rate, breathing, and eye movements start to slow down.
- Stage 2: In this stage, your muscles continue to relax, your body temperature drops, and your eye movement stops. Here, your brain activity slows down, but experiences short bursts of activity that last for just a couple of seconds, and play a role in organizing memories. Most of your sleep is spent in Stage 2.
- Stage 3: This is where you are in a deep sleep. A lot of tissue repair, growth hormone production, and immune system optimization occur. Your mind and body require high-quality stage 3 sleep to feel well-rested.
- REM: This is where most dreaming happens and is usually the stage where we remember our dreams most vividly.
- Sleep position
Not all sleep trackers can track your sleep position, but there are more advanced devices that can. You can see the position you were sleeping in, and how long you were in each position.
- Deep sleep
Deep sleep is monitored accurately through polysomnography (PSG) tests. Most sleep monitors use heart rate and breathing as a surrogate for estimating sleep.
The Importance of Consistency in Monitoring Your Sleep
Here are just a few of the many benefits you’ll receive from monitoring your sleep.
- You can find out what’s causing your sleep issues
- You will feel more motivated to improve your sleep quality
- You’ll know how much sleep is right for you
- You’ll wake up during the best sleep cycle
- You’ll have enough information about your sleeping activity
When to Consider Professional Help for Sleep Issues
While learning how to monitor sleep can help your overall health, it is important to remember that monitoring alone may not be enough. You should consider getting professional help for sleep issues when you experience the following:
- Snoring or gasping for air while you sleep
- Having a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep throughout the night
- Feeling tired during the day, even if you’ve slept the night before
- Can’t perform your daily activities because you’re too tired
If you continue experiencing these issues, seeking professional help may be the right thing to do, so you can get a clearer diagnosis and the right treatment plan.
Combining Technology and Healthy Habits for Better Rest
Overall, learning how to monitor sleep can be a useful and accessible way to gain more insights into your own sleep activities. It can help narrow down the reasons you may not be getting the quality sleep your body and mind need.
