Did you know that devices that monitor our movements during the night can give us wrong ideas about sleep! Yes, we are talking about sleep trackers and it is high time to kick them out of bed.
Activity trackers, smart watches and smartphone apps are used to track a person’s sleep as it records how often people toss and turn in bed. According to these devices, the more movement is the less sleep a person receives. But that’s not the complete picture, Dr Jerald Simmons, founding director of Comprehensive Sleep Medicine Associates says, “Sleep trackers look at behaviours; they really don’t know whether you are asleep or not!” He further adds that these devices can be misleading. A Fitbit or smartwatch speculate your sleep on the amount of movement but the question arises that what is the significance of this movement?” .
There are many people who sleep with doing more movements and fear that they are getting poor sleep. But, often they do not need to fear at all as the tracker is not the correct thing you should completely rely on. The main problem is that the devices don’t notice real disturbances in sleep like breathing problems etc.
Here are the reliable signs that show whether you had a good sleep or not:
- Daytime sleepiness
- Nightmare drooling
- Regular Headaches
Trackers collect data on different types of behaviours but there are other smarter ways too :
- Record sleep and wake-up time
- Keep a track of drinking and eating habits
- Exercise for getting sleep
