An Introduction to Understanding Your Sleep

What is sleep and why do we, and mammals, sleep?

Sleep is the recovery mechanism for all of us. It’s when we rebuild our bodies, our muscles, cleanse our organs, and rewire our brain. Sleep is necessary. The Sleeptracker-AI® System helps us understand and improve our sleep. Here is an example: The Sleeptracker-AI® System will automatically measure your heart rate through the night, and you can see that as your cardiovascular system repairs and rebuilds during sleep, by the morning your resting heart rate is often significantly lower for a healthy individual.

How do I sleep?

The Sleeptracker-AI® app makes it easy to rate your sleep from day one, with your “Sleep Quality”. For example, there are people with a sleep quality of 50 out of 100 initially who after a few months of using the Sleeptracker-AI® app improved their sleep quality to 75, and continue to improve after that. The ideal sleeper will look for a sleep quality of 90+ over time. But many healthy individuals function well at 75 or above.

What does how I sleep mean?

Practically, how we sleep in the long-term has an important impact on how we perform at work or at the gym, on our mood, and on our overall health.

What are sleep cycles, and how do they affect my sleep?

Sleep occurs in waves, with a crest called REM (rapid eye movement) when we dream, and a trough called deep sleep when we are in maximum recovery mode, together with several intermediate stages. All those stages of the “sleep wave" are necessary, and sleep typically comes in multiple waves. Depending on the individual, each wave of sleep lasts 45 to 90 minutes, and we experience between four to six waves of sleep (complete cycles) per night. The highest percentage of deep sleep is experienced during the earlier waves.

What does it mean to improve my sleep?

The consequences of improving sleep are profound and measurable over time, even as we age. Improving sleep means improving overall health, work and physical performance, mood, and even relationships. There are only upsides to improving your sleep.

How can I personally improve my sleep?

You can improve your sleep by making small incremental changes. The power of the Sleeptracker-AI® System is it can quantify the effect of these little changes, and the Sleeptracker-AI® Engine will deliver personalized insights based on your own sleep performance, as well as based on the sleep performance of “people like you” in the Sleeptracker-AI® community.

Can I really improve my sleep with the Sleeptracker-AI® System?

In a nutshell, yes! Let us consider the amount of time that we, as humans, sleep. We sleep for a third of our life. At the same time, we live in a sleep-deprived world. Due to the demands of our modern world, it’s not feasible to increase the amount of time we spend in bed attempting to sleep. Instead, we need to better understand our habits to improve the efficiency, performance, and overall quality of our sleep. Now consider a night where you spend 8 hours in bed, but only sleep six of those hours; your sleep efficiency is 75%. If we increase that efficiency by only 13 percent, your six hours of sleep becomes seven hours. This increase gains you a full hour of sleep. The Sleeptracker-AI® System can help you improve the quality of your sleep, so you can sleep more, and sleep better.

What happens in the first 30 days when I use the Sleeptracker-AI® System?

From the first day that you start monitoring your sleep, the Sleeptracker-AI® System will be helpful. Yet, the first step to understanding how to sleep better is understanding how you sleep. In the first 30 days of use, the Sleeptracker-AI® Sleep Coach gets to know you, gives you personalized insights to help you improve your own sleep over time, and understands how you are sleeping compared to “people like you”.

What does periodization of sleep mean?

By carefully analyzing several million nights of sleep of Mr. and Ms. Everyone, the Sleeptracker-AI® System has come to the conclusion that sleep performance comes in waves, just like athletic performance. There will be times in life when our sleep performance decreases; For example, if we catch the flu, tear a muscle or have other aches and pains, or if we have busy times at work. It’s important to accept and understand this fact of life, and with the help of the Sleeptracker-AI® System start improving our sleep quality again, patiently a little bit at a time. Many things in life go in waves and in cycles. While the Sleeptracker-AI® System helps you improve your sleep over time, it is important to realize that improvement does not occur on a consistent, continuous slope. Improvement in any realm doesn’t occur at a constant rate, but overall, improvement is periodized; consistency and daily practice make a big difference. That’s true with the Sleeptracker-AI® System too.

Why is it important to store my sleep information over time as I age gracefully?

Identifying correlations and trends in long-term sleep data helps us understand how our bodies, health, and habits change over time. As we age, our sleep habits change. Sudden changes in our sleep as reported by the Sleeptracker-AI® System can be indicators of how something in our well-being may have changed and provides a good reminder to continue improving our sleep performance. That’s true with any health condition and at any age. We can always make small incremental improvements to sleep. The Sleeptracker-AI® System is a key to better understanding our health, and to building a healthier future.

What vital signs does the Sleeptracker-AI® System monitor? 

The Sleeptracker-AI® System continually monitors respiration and breathing patterns, as well as fluctuations in heart rate, and qualitative and quantitative body motion.

Should I take power naps during the day?

Taking power naps is a great idea. This is completely natural, particularly if your sleep wasn’t ideally restful. In Spanish, “siesta” comes from the Latin phrase “hora sexto” which means “sixth hour” and you will notice in general 6 hours after waking up you will feel a bit sleepy. If you have an opportunity, try a 20-30 minute power nap to recharge; no more than 30 minutes or you risk waking up groggy.

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