Tech Tip — Auto Sleep — Are you Getting Enough Quality Sleep?
“How did you sleep last night?” can be a simple conversation starter at breakfast. Rarely does anyone have an objective answer to that question that could be supported with data. Instead, we provide a typical subjective response, “I slept well’ or ‘meh, I slept ok.” There are several apps and other tools that can now tell you exactly how you slept last night. They can give you data points on the duration of your sleep, how long you were in deep sleep, if you were restless, and more. I have been using a sleep tracking application for several years now. I find it both interesting and helpful to get information about sleep habits and patterns.
There are tons of different apps for iOS and Android devices on the market. Some work directly with your phone without any additional devices. Others work with peripherals that can be attached to the bed. More commonly, applications will work in conjunction with one of the smartwatches or wrist trackers that you can wear to sleep. I use my Apple Watch for sleep tracking which provides data back to both the Apple Health app and AutoSleep, another app dedicated to collecting, analyzing and tracking your sleep data.
What is AutoSleep?
AutoSleep is an application for iOS devices that will work both with or without an Apple Watch. It is designed to track your nightly sleep patterns. The application can identify when you go to sleep, when you wake up, the restfulness and the quality of your sleep. The basic report out shows you the duration of your sleep, your resting heart rate (with Apple Watch), sleep quality, and duration of deep sleep. AutoSleep displays this as ‘rings’ similar to how Apple shows its fitness tracking metrics, with the idea being to ‘close your rings’ each day.
AutoSleep uses these data points, plus some others, to give you a sleep score that you can use to understand patterns over time and any environmental elements that can enhance your sleep quality.
Why Track Your Sleep
Tracking your sleep will give you an idea of your rest patterns and how productive your sleep is. I would caution anyone that using wrist devices and mobile apps will not give you fully accurate results when compared to scientific sleep studies. If you suffer from a severe sleep issue, like sleep apnea, consult your physician for professional advice. I cannot stress enough how important that is. I did have someone who worked for me many years ago that was really struggling to stay awake in meetings and had some other health issues. It was to the point where it was a performance issue, and we had to discuss it as such. He reached out to his doctor and was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea, and it had put his life at risk. Getting the support he needed may have saved him from a heart attack or worse. Your sleep is really nothing to take for granted.
Seeing patterns emerge over time with your sleep habits can assist in making updates to personal habits and routines. Keeping a personal journal along with your sleep data can also be a good way to connect the data from the app to how you are feeling. This provides you with both quantifiable and qualitative information to help in making any changes you may choose to make.
Using AutoSleep
When you begin using AutoSleep, you will provide some basic set up information for the application, like how much sleep do you think you need each night. Be as accurate as possible with based on what you know about yourself. You can always update this later as you get some data to support it. If you believe that you can get by with four or five hours, you are likely shorting yourself a couple of hours of NEEDED sleep each night. This is where trend information over time can come in handy. You may think you only need four or five hours, but after tracking your sleep and how you feel, you will likely discover that you need more than six or seven hours of sleep each night.
If you are using this with your Apple Watch, you’ll need the app activated for your watch and complete a few set up items on that device as well. Once the connection is established, it is seamless. I do not do anything special with my phone or watch any night to use AutoSleep. That is one of the best features I believe this has.
Tracking
AutoSleep can track many aspects of sleep. The primary data points are time asleep, deep sleep, quality, and heart rate. Those make up the ‘sleep rings’ you see within the app.
It also charts out the stages of your sleep throughout the night. This is a good way to get an idea of whether it is capturing your sleep correctly. There is an adjust option to manually override the data or to help fine tune the tracking features of the app.
There are several other graphs that you can use to get a better understanding of your sleep time breakdown as well. This begins to show the power of AutoSleep. Those options are valuable to allow you to decide how deep you want to dive into your sleep data.
Other Metics
AutoSleep can track many other metrics for you as well. These can include resting heart rate, heart rate variability, waking heart rate, SPO2 (blood oxygen level during sleep; this requires Apple Watch or other blood oxygen monitoring device). Some of these may not be important to you or any casual sleep tracking person. For others, they may be very valuable for their health tracking.
Sleep Bank
I like the feature within the app that shows you your sleep bank. I am not sure how accurate it really is, or even how meaningful the information is. It is, however, something that I can look at that basically tells me if I am getting enough sleep over the long term or if I am falling behind. Studies have shown that being sleep-deprived can be as impairing as alcohol. This can also help you determine what the right amount of sleep you need each night really is.
Track The Time It Takes To Fall Asleep
You do not need to press any start or stop buttons at all to track your sleep. But if you want to optionally track how long it takes for your body to enter sleep, then you can start using the Lights Off feature. This is another handy feature that can give you a sense of how prepared you are for sleep each night. If you notice that it takes a long time to fall asleep each night, you can begin your evening routine earlier to account for that length of time to fall asleep. Or you can begin to look at what activities you are doing before bedtime that may be causing the lengthy time to fall asleep. You may find that you need to change your evening routine to allow for a quicker way to fall asleep.
Other Items
AutoSleep provides options for shift workers. This is perfect for people who may have irregular shifts in retail. Having this available still allows you to collect the data you need to make the best sleep schedule for whatever you work requirements may be.
You don’t need an Apple Watch to use AutoSleep. The app can detect when you are asleep through your phone and your sleep settings you establish within the application.
You can use AutoSleep with many of Apple’s Health and Sleep features (auto-alarm, sleep reminders etc.). So, you are not limited to just what AutoSleep has to offer, and the Apple Heath App can take the data from AutoSleep and keep all of your health data in one place.
There is a lot of excellent additional information on the AutoSleep website. If you are at all interested in tracking your sleep, I would recommend starting on their webpage to understand all the value you can get from sleep tracking and AutoSleep specifically.
Sleep is more important than many people realize or give it credit for. Understanding your sleep habits and patterns can ensure that you maximize your sleep and thereby optimize your personal performance. And, most important, feel better. I have found this app to be easy to use, reliable in its general data, and it has helped me build a better sleep routine for every night of the week.
How would you benefit by knowing more about your sleep patterns?
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