Sleep Tracker

Sleep tracking is important because it helps you understand your sleep patterns, identify potential sleep issues, and make informed changes to improve your sleep quality. Good sleep is essential for physical health, mental well-being, cognitive function, and overall quality of life. By tracking your sleep, you can identify factors that affect your sleep positively or negatively, establish better sleep habits, and work toward getting the recommended 7-9 hours of quality sleep per night that most adults need.

Sleep efficiency is a measure of how much time you actually spend asleep compared to the total time you spend in bed. It's calculated by dividing your total sleep time by your total time in bed and multiplying by 100 to get a percentage. For example, if you spend 8 hours in bed but only sleep for 7 hours, your sleep efficiency would be 87.5%. Generally, a sleep efficiency of 85% or higher is considered good, while efficiency below 85% may indicate sleep problems. Factors that can lower sleep efficiency include difficulty falling asleep, frequent awakenings during the night, and waking up too early without being able to fall back asleep.

Improving sleep quality involves developing good sleep habits, also known as sleep hygiene. Some effective strategies include: maintaining a consistent sleep schedule (even on weekends), creating a relaxing bedtime routine, ensuring your sleep environment is cool, dark, and quiet, limiting exposure to screens before bedtime, avoiding caffeine and large meals close to bedtime, getting regular exercise (but not too close to bedtime), managing stress through relaxation techniques, and limiting naps to 20-30 minutes earlier in the day. It's also helpful to use your bed primarily for sleep, so your brain associates it with rest rather than work or entertainment.

Sleep is divided into two main types: REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep and non-REM sleep, which has three stages. Stage 1 non-REM sleep is the lightest stage, the transition between wakefulness and sleep. Stage 2 non-REM sleep is a period of light sleep before entering deeper sleep, where heart rate and breathing regulate and body temperature drops. Stage 3 non-REM sleep is deep sleep, which is crucial for feeling refreshed in the morning, supporting immune function, and physical recovery. REM sleep first occurs about 90 minutes after falling asleep, where eyes move rapidly behind closed lids, breathing becomes faster and irregular, and most dreaming occurs. REM sleep is important for memory consolidation and learning. A complete sleep cycle through all stages typically takes about 90-110 minutes and repeats several times throughout the night.