Emerging sleep tech that will help improve your sleep quality
Tech to improve sleep is on the rise. The popularity of consumer sleep aids rocketing. New sleep trackers, nasal tape, and even sleep gummies are selling fast. The sector is poised for more growth.
March 29, 2024 | Daani Faiz
Restorative sleep is the platform on which all behaviours when we are awake are based. When duration of sleep starts to move toward six and half hours or less, a number of different disorders being to increase in prevalence. The following areas are impacted due to poor sleep:
Mental Health: Insufficient sleep is associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts.
Obesity: Sleep deprivation often leads to increased cravings and appetite. Quality sleep helps regulate appetite and maintain a healthy gut microbiome, affecting the levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin.
Cardiovascular Health: While maintaining cardiovascular fitness is essential, the impact of a lack of sleep can overshadow the benefits of physical exercise over the day or week
Cognitive function: Poor sleep is correlated with drops in day to day functions. This can be measured by lower productivity and reduced problem solving ability. The most extreme impact of this can be see in the number of car crashes due to fatigue in the United States. Fall-asleep car crashes exceed 100,000 per year in United States, resulting in at least 1500 deaths. To put this in perspective fall-asleep crashes may kill more young Americans than alcohol-related crashes.
4 Key Areas of Sleep Tech Trending Now
1. Sleep Tracking technology is booming, there is endless data to help you self-guide your journey
Sleep Wearables:
Simple diagnostics to neural implants are starting to become more common and this trend will only accelerate. Sleep trackers will give you an avenue to reflect on your quality of sleep, often with user-friendly graphs or reports that make it easy to spot trends. This method in itself will help you adhere to a better sleep schedule.
The Whoop 4.0 and Oura Ring has some of the most comprehensive sleep and recovery tracking. These devices are built for a specific purpose. People who want everyday versatility might be better off going in a different direction. Smartwatches like the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6, or Apple Watch will get you more value for the price.
Metrics that these devices measure:
Sleep cycles are important to assess quality of sleep. The net time in sleep and minimum interruptions is a good starting point, but we can go deeper. Alcohol will inhibit REM sleeps due to it’s effects on GABA (an inhibitory neurotransmitter). Here is the breakdown of a few key health metrics you should analyse at wake:
Heart rate while sleeping: The typical heart rate drops to between 40 and 50 bpm during sleep. Monitoring your sleeping heart rate will provides you with an indication of your sleep quality and general health
Respiratory Rate Sleep: Respiratory rate of healthy adults in a relaxed state is about 12–20 times per minute.
Sleep stages: A person cycles through these stages 4–5 times every night. The stages cycle in this order: N1, N2, N3, N2, REM (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK526132/).
N1 (NREM Stage 1, ~5%): Lighter sleep
N2 (NREM Stage 2, ~45%): Deeper sleep
N3 (NREM Stage 3 ~25%): Deepest non-REM sleep: Body repairs and regrows tissue, the aim should be to achieve
REM (Target 25%): Non restful sleep. Eyes and breathing muscles are active but skeletal muscles are paralysed
Using these metrics and aiming for these targets you can identify if you are getting quality sleep and then go on to find habits to further improve it. We will cover this more deeply in the next two sections.
2. Tech to help you set up your environment for success
Creating a sleep-positive environment can significantly improve your sleep quality. Examples of these are; limiting device usage before bed, decreased activity and reduction in food consumption or stimulants prior to bed. Scheduling in over 8 hours, to get to be in bed and get to sleep is the best area to invest in. If you’re struggling to sleep, start with exercise look to get 20 minutes of cardio at consistent elevated heart rate, 8 hours before bed in your day.
If you can’t wear a watch, or a ring to bed, you may want to look into non-invasive options like the Eight Sleep or smart home devices such as the Google Nest Hub. Here is a checklist of additional areas you can invest in to improve your sleep:
Bedroom environment: An ideal sleep environment is quiet, dark, and cool. Most sleepers find comfort in a room between 18ºC to 20ºC (65ºF to 68º F).
Use the bed for sleep and sex only: Avoid other activities in bed such as working or eating. If you are unable to fall asleep after about twenty minutes, get out of bed and read or do another quiet activity until you are tired.
Bright light powerfully inhibits melatonin:. Remove mindless scrolling or television before bed and try using no light or very dim light. Or you could try to use amber or red light (longer wavelengths), as this type of light more minimally impacts melatonin levels.
3. Habit building
A late night phone call with a friend, an early morning flight, doom-scrolling on instagram. All these events act as a catalyst to interrupt any intention you may have had to get adequate sleep. The data is irrefutable that both in the long term and short term, particular bad habits will have a compounding negative effect on your sleep:
Habits that effect sleep - your nutrition, mental health and stress levels, physical health and exercise over a long period of time can determine quality of sleep for your upcoming night.
Limit alcohol: The best recommendations here are through mobile assisted cognitive–behavioral treatment programs
Avoid eating too close to bedtime: Eating too close to bedtime is related to gastroesophageal reflux (GER), also called acid reflux or acid indigestion. GER occurs when the contents of the stomach return back up the esophagus.
Breathing through your nose: Nasal breathing is shown to reduce symptoms of sleep apnea: Nasal strips and Sleep mouth tape can help you build this habit.
Meditation. Using apps such as Calm or Headspace for guided meditation can also assist
Exercise regularly: Among the many benefits of regular exercise is an easier time falling asleep and staying asleep. Aim to get 150 minutes of moderate-level exercise a week. Avoiding exercising two to three hours before bedtime.
4. Clinical Sleep Disorders and medications
Sleep Disorders can be difficult to treat with the products being listed above and I’d advise seeing a physician or undertaking a sleep study to get the best understanding of how to improve your sleep clinically. The following are just a few sleep disorders you may come across
Psychophysiological insomnia, involving general anxiety about sleep resulting in sleep problems.
Short-Term Insomnia Disorder, due to traumatic or difficult periods in life. Which can be treated through cognitive behavioural therapy methods and particular digital aids.
Obstructive sleep apnea: episodes of complete collapse of the airway or partial collapse with an associated decrease in oxygen saturation or arousal from sleep.
Narcolepsy Type-1, due to particular neurotransmitter - hypocretin which helps the brain that helps control being awake and when you enter REM sleep. Hypocretin levels are low in people who experience this disorder
Parasomnias occur during during REM sleep and involve acting out during a dream, these can include: Sleep walking, sleep terrors, sleep-related eating disorder through getting out of bed and eating, REM sleep behaviour disorder sleep enuresis
Pharmaceutical Medication can be a solution to poor sleep however, side effects can outweigh the benefits depending on your objective. Diving into specific prescription medications. Selective serotonin (SSRIs) and Serotonin-norepinephrine (SNRIs) also enhance the action of these two wake-promoting neurotransmitters. SSRIs and SNRIs are widely used for treatment of depression. Insomnia or disturbed sleep are common side effects of these medications. Doxepin can improve sleep in adults and elderly primarily with insomnia, whereas Modafinil increases the activity of wakefulness, (ref)Over the counter medication that effects your waking neurotransmitters, such as antihistamines or melatonin can negatively impact your neurotransmitters while sleeping and hence any medication you take should be reviewed with a health professional to understand the systematic effects.
Quote to inspire you
“Practice does not make perfect. It is practice, followed by a night of sleep, that leads to perfection.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams
Question to leave you with:
What improvements will you make to get better sleep tonight?
Recommended Learning material:
Books:
Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams, Matthew Walker
Course:
University of Michigan free online course “Sleep: Neurobiology, Medicine, and Society”
Emerging Tech:
Onera raises $32M to help clinicians conduct sleep studies in patients’ homes: Dutch startup sells 'polysomnography-as-a-service'