Digital Sleep Tech Proliferates

We spend almost a third of our lives sleeping, yet we are still amazingly ignorant about sleep itself. We know though, that modern living has disrupted our whole approach to natural sleep and that electric lighting is so prevalent, that not only do we not align ourselves with the natural patterns of going to sleep soon after darkness falls and rising with first light, but that we live in a "light polluted" environment which increasingly makes it difficult to go to sleep.

As someone who used to travel a lot for business, I hated trying to sleep in hotels. Not only was I in an unfamiliar bed, but hotels are often quite noisy at might and modern hotel rooms are full of electronic gadgets with LED lights which glow in the dark. I used to lay towels over the crack at the bottom of the door and turn everything I could off at the wall or place room service menus in front of the offending lights. I also tried a sleep mask, to limited effect. so it was interesting to see recent research which suggests that one brain hemisphere usually stays active all night when someone sleeps in an unfamiliar place. This effect has been described as akin to having a neurological night watch.

More interestingly, scientists have also re-discovered the fact that people used to sleep naturally in segmented sleep patterns, usually of two stretches of about four hours each. Roger Ekirch published a book in 2001 documenting over 500 literary references to first and second phases of sleep at night. A pattern which appears to have begun to be disrupted in the late 18th century as growing affluence and changing technology gradually eliminated our natural sleep patterns.

People tend to worry about their appearance if they don't sleep well, as this causes unsightly dark rings and bags under the eyes. However there are more serious physiological effects. Recently, scientists have begun to link poor sleep to obesity, heart disease and diabetes, as well as a host of other side effects such as grumpiness and having a low sex drive. Also, numerous studies have shown that poor sleep can affect driving ability as much as alcohol consumption. Working night shift is also considered a factor that can cause factor according to the World Health Organisation and studies have shown that nurses who work extended periods of night shifts, tend to die prematurely.

So it is interesting to see what is happening in the Wearable Technology space to help people improve their sleep, as several interesting devices have come to market in the last year. These devices contrast with others such as muse from interaXon which is focused on relaxation and meditation and aim to improve sleep quality.

Insomni Light - This is perhaps the simplest device on the market. Basically, sleep scientists tend to talk about 4 different states characterised by brainwave activity. The Insomni-Light sleep mask uses LED lights to relax the user, which it claims will help take your brainwaves into the Delta state associated with deep restorative sleep. At present this is just about to go on sale.

Cereve Sleep System from ebb - This basically uses a head band  on the forehead to cool your head (and brain). A bedside unit supplies cool liquid to the head band and maintains it at the required temperature. Ebbs site claims that 80% of users find that this improves the quality of their sleep. The site also claims that this is FDA cleared for safety and effectiveness.

Dream - from Rythm -  this is a device that I personally use and have written about before. It is a headband which helps you get off to sleep by using several different strategies: playing soothing sounds, helping you time your breathing to encourage sleep, or meditation to break agitated thought patterns. It also monitors your sleep and, whilst you are in deep sleep, it plays you "pink noise" to improve the quality of deep sleep. It will also bring you gradually awake by playing gentle noise during light sleep around the time your alarm is about to go off. It is claimed to improve deep sleep quality by up to 30%. My experience is that it improves over time and that I average just over a 20% improvement per night, although his varies considerably from night to night; on my best night ever, I got an 80% improvement.

The information that it provides is useful feedback and I have learnt a lot about my sleep from it, as yes, I am sad enough to plot it out on graphs using a spreadsheet. It seems that typically I spend 20 to 40 minutes per night in Deep Sleep. Although on one memorable night I achieved 119 minutes of Deep Sleep. I also tend to spend about 80 to 120 minutes per night in REM Sleep (the state usually associated with dreaming). Over the period that I have used it (about 8 weeks) the amount of Deep Sleep that I get every night has increased by around 5 minutes which is a lot when compared with a typical 20 to 40 minute period. My REM sleep has also increased by about 15 minutes, which again is a significant percentage increase, .

The period that I actually spend asleep has not changed significantly, at not quite 15 minutes per night, compared with a typical night's sleep of 6 hours twenty minutes (or 380 minutes) or under 5%. So the material improvements have been in quality rather than quantity. As REM and Deep Sleep are both considered beneficial. This is witnessed by the fact that I feel less tired and have lost the deep circles under my eyes which were there previously.

NuCalm - ReNu headset - This is part of an overall system utilising suplements, electrodes, the headset and a sleep mask. The electrodes provide microcurrent stimulation in the form of beta and delta waves associated with REM and Deep Sleep, and the headset provides sounds (which ReNu calls neuroacoustics) to relax the mind, deal with stress and assist with sleep.

Although this is a very complete system, it is not designed like the others specifically for sleep, so may be a bit clunky for people trying to just improve their sleep. 

Thynk Relax Pro - This is a device which you attach tot he back of your neck. It uses electrical neck stimulation to help you relax and improve sleep.

Common to all of these devices, is the need to use them over a period of time to achieve noticable improvements. As these are all promising 1st generation products, I would expect that we shall see evolution and enhancement. There may be further crossover to integrate all approches: light, sound, cooling and electrical stimulation. There may be further features to work on sound cancellation, as none of the products considers the impact of ambient noise on sleep. Additionally, I would expect improvements in form factors to improve sleep comfort and avoid headsets falling off during the night. Furthermore, feedback and use of machine learning is bound to improve overall effectiveness and the tailoring of device performance to individual users. However, I think it is safe to say that a New Dawn on sleep improvement and self help has arrived.

N.B. all pictures were copied from the manufacturers publicly released pictures on various websites and the copy right does not belong to me. So please respect these rights if you intend copying and re-using for any commercial purpose.