“Time is money” once you waste it without any reason, it will never return to you. It’s you who have a desire for a perfect life, but without giving value to your time, you cannot maintain a perfect life. You consume a lot of your time while sleeping, which leaves a big effect on your whole life. So, it’s intuitive that you want to have an idea of how much time you were sleeping? And is the sleeping hours leave a good impact on your life? Or you are exceeding the limits of healthy sleeping hours? Which leads to sleep chaos and may cause illness.
In ancient times, people maintain diaries to look up at their sleep, or they asked their companions about their sleeping time that both are unlikely activities and not give a proper description. You can get information by spending two or more days in a clinic or sleep specialist. But it will be hectic for you to extract two or more days from your busy routine. Here’s another choice to make your self-evaluation perfect: The Smartwatch.
How do Sleep Trackers Work?
Now you are thinking, how can a small gadget (smartwatch) detect your sleeping hours? And you depend only on this tiny device? Here I will first tell you how your sleep’s accuracy is measured in a clinic or lab. And after that will discuss how accurately the smartwatch is working on your sleep.
If you visit a psychologist and he/she discovered that you are going through a sleep disorder. He/ She will recommend you to attend a sleep specialist center to examine your sleep. This technique is known as polysomnography.
Usually, it will take a night or twice with various tools that will measure your sleep cycles. As well as your doctor or anyone will be there while you are sleeping to examine you. And in this way, a lot of information is collected about your sleep that includes:
- Waves of your brain
- Your body movement
- Your heart rate
- The position which you are holding overnight while sleeping
The specialist will use all the above information to detect whether you are suffering from any sleep chaos. That is why polysomnography is considered the golden standard of sleep testing.
It’s difficult to imagine how a small device like a wristwatch or even a smartphone can give the same services as all high technology measuring equipment. The smartwatch is a wearable sleep monitor. Monitoring your sleep by some wearable device is called actigraphy. It includes a measuring tool known as an accelerometer.
Sleep specialists use actigraphy for a long time. You will have a question if polysomnography is highly recommended, then why actigraphy is used. So the answer is in labs or clinics, people normally could not sleep properly. In this way, the result of polysomnography will not lead to an accurate diagnose. Actigraphy is not only cost less than that of polysomnography, but you can wear this smartwatch in your own home for two or more days while you are sleeping rather than spending your time in a clinical lab. And you can examine yourself more precisely than in a lab.
Here is the discussion about smartwatches, so the type of actigraphy in which a device is worn on the wrist is called wrist actigraphy. A question arise in your mind is this small device gives you the correct information?
Numerous studies are different in results of actigraphy. But aggregately, it is said that wrist actigraphy accurately examines the sleep routine of an adult in a natural environment. Because it is a technology that you can use without disturbing your daily activities, so it gives you the advantage to keep track of your fitness and achieve your health goals.
The smartwatch record different activities while you are sleeping. For example, it records your heart rate, body movement. Your sleep often gets disturbed with any violence, such as children cry overnight or any voice that urges you to be awake. It shows notifications of the everyday report. In this way, you can make decisions about your health. So, it can be said that smartwatches are very helpful and useful for our fitness.
Why use a smartwatch to track sleep?
A smartwatch can be used for the following reasons as a sleep tracker:
- Sometimes you may wake up due to some disturbance at night that may cause sleep disorder. A smartwatch will help you to track your sleeping hours and note how many hours you slept. By using a smartwatch for a week or more, you will be able to judge whether you are suffering from a sleep disorder or not.
- If you found that you have a sleeping disorder, then you will be able to set a goal to get perfect sleeping hours.
- It saves your time and money that will be wasted on polysomnography.
- You can examine yourselves in a natural environment.
- If you are a person who is too much concerned about your health, then you must buy a smartwatch.
- You will get fitness tips to improve your health. You can also use it as a cell phone. So, it has reduced the burden of keeping both cell phones and watch.
