Sleep monitoring technology has come a long way. In the early days, you had to be hooked up to an entire computer for monitoring your sleep. At present, a simple wearable connected with your smartphone can do the same job, and do it better.
Sleep monitoring apps play a big role in the healthcare industry. From determining the quality of our sleep to predicting possible f risks, these apps are very helpful to us. Here are some important contributions of sleep monitoring apps in the healthcare sector.
Understanding the quality of sleep
The quality of your sleep can be determined by taking a few things into account. These include the duration of your sleep, sleep phases, number of times you wake up during your sleep, and so on. By keeping track of all these measures, the sleep monitoring app on your phone or tablet can give you a clear insight into the quality of your sleep.
For instance, by measuring the time between you falling asleep and waking up, the app can put a verdict on how well you have slept based on its duration. Additional metrics, like the number of times you had to wake up during your sleep, can also be used to put a label on your sleep quality.
And while modern-day sleeping tracking apps can be very accurate in terms of the data they collect, they cannot measure sleep directly. Instead, they observe and study the data collected from you, and provide you with an estimate or a rough idea on the quality of your sleep.
Recognizing sleeping patterns
As mentioned earlier, sleep tracking apps cannot measure your sleep or its quality directly, but instead leave you with a rough estimation. What these apps can do, however, is observe how you sleep, take those estimations into account, and recognize your sleeping patterns.
When you use such a sleeping track app for a long time, the app gets the opportunity to collect valuable data on you. This data includes when you fall asleep, when you wake up, how long you sleep in a 24 hour period, how many times you need to wake up during your sleep, and various other factors. The app then studies this data and tries to find a pattern in your sleep.
Based on this type of analysis, the sleep monitoring app is further able to give a verdict on the quality of your sleep.
Identifying possible sleep disorders
A sleep disorder is a problem or anomaly in your sleep that can lead to problems like anxiety, lack of concentration, lethargy, and other physical and mental health issues. Sleep disorders are caused mostly due to a lack of quality and sufficient sleep. And while such disorders are often ignored or overlooked by the common individual, a sleep tracking app can identify them easily.
It is better to mention here that while sleeping tracking apps can identify such sleep disorders, they are not capable of a clear diagnosis of the problem. Just like in the case of determining your sleep quality, the app can only give you a rough estimate or suggestion regarding the possible sleep disorder you might have. It can only make you alert to the situation. You have to confirm the possibility of having such a disorder with a professional.
Predicting possible health risks
Similar to how it can suggest possible sleep disorders, the sleep monitoring app can also pass comments on possible health risks. Instead of giving you a direct ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on whether you might have a disease now or sometime in the near future, the app will pass its suggestions or comments in terms of chances.
For instance, lack of adequate sleep can lead to a variety of problems. These include diabetes, heart diseases, obesity, and the shortening of your life expectancy. But the sleep monitoring app on your phone will not give you a direct reading or conclusion. It will not tell you how much weight you are going to gain in the next few weeks, or by how many years your life expectancy will be shortened. Instead, it will provide you suggestions in terms of percentage-chances. It will alert you by saying that you have a 20-25% chance of increased diabetes problems, or that your BMI will see an increase by 10-15%.
It is possible to predict such health risks thanks to the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence in these apps. While the tracking system is constantly receiving data from you, there is a high chance that the system has already been trained on such scenarios using pre-existing datasets. That is how they can make such good predictions.
Determining the impact of different factors on sleep
There are a lot of factors that can affect the quality and duration of your sleep. Some of these factors are quite evident to us, while some not so much.
Temperature and lighting are two common factors that can impact our sleep. The right amount of lighting and the proper temperature can result in a good night’s sleep. The presence of excessive lighting or a high temperature can result in the complete opposite. These factors are easily picked up by modern-day sleep trackers that are equipped with not only body sensors, but with other sensors that can take various types of readings from the user’s surroundings. This way, the app can correlate these factors with their impact on the user’s sleep.
Apart from the more evident factors, there are other elements, like stress and anxiety, that can also affect your sleep. And while the monitor may or may not be able to tell whether you are not getting a good sleep because of your anxiety, you can always try using something like a weighted anxiety blanket to see if it helps you sleep better (which it should).
You can also use this blanket regularly to see whether your sleep quality improves or not, and compare the results on the monitoring app with the ones obtained prior to using a weighted blanket.
Sleep monitoring apps may not be perfect, but they are reliable. Despite their inability to make direct predictions, these systems are good enough to help us understand what is wrong with our sleep or how we can improve its quality.
