Like many Americans, I know I need more sleep. I’m a night owl, often writing late into the night, but also a mom who gets up early with her kids.
The result: I’m not getting enough rest.
When I started using a wearable health device to track my sleep, I found that not only was I not getting enough sleep, but I had too much light sleep and not enough deep or rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.
Being able to see these patterns gave me the info I needed to take measures to improve my sleep routine.
Today’s wearable health trackers have gone beyond just measuring number of hours to give better insight into your sleep patterns (known as your “sleep architecture”) to help you understand what type of sleep you need more of, how much recovery your body should have based on your exercise and amount of sleep the previous day and even if you’re at risk for sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnea.
However, while wearable devices can provide helpful health data and alert you to potential health issues, they can’t officially diagnose a medical problem.
“The future of consumer sleep wearables is bright — not because they replace clinical testing, but because they help people notice patterns, stay engaged with their sleep and make informed changes over time,” says Dr. Yoel Green, a clinical assistant professor of sleep medicine at Stanford Medicine.
Let’s take a look at what sleep parameters wearables can measure and what steps you can take to adjust your sleep patterns by making specific lifestyle changes.
[SEE: Can Tracking Your Cortisol Help Your Health? Understanding the Stress Hormone]
Popular Wearable Sleep Trackers
Some of the most popular wearable sleep trackers on the market today include:
[CHART]
[READ Why Can’t I Sleep When I’m Stressed?]
Understanding Sleep Stages
There are four stages of sleep:
[CHART]
Each of these sleep stages is needed to fuel different biological processes in the brain and body.
“It is not known how the brain determines which stage of sleep to enter, but the brain and body likely need all stages of sleep to obtain the most restorative sleep,” says Dr. David Kuhlmann, a sleep medicine specialist at Bothwell Regional Health Center in Missouri and an American Academy of Sleep Medicine spokesperson and board member.
“Single nights are snapshots; patterns over time provide the real signal,” Green says. “Rather than chasing specific stage percentages, wearables are best used to identify trends.”
Even more importantly, however, is how often you wake up tired.
“While a health tracker can give you an estimate that your metrics are outside of a normal range, the focus should be on how you feel when you wake up and how you feel during the day,” Kuhlmann says. “Regardless of what your health tracker says, if you feel like your sleep is not what it should be or if you find that your energy level is waning during the day, you may want to visit a sleep physician.”
[10 Bedtime Foods & Drinks for Deep Sleep]
How to Increase Deep Sleep and REM Sleep
Both deep sleep and REM sleep are important for brain health.
“Deep sleep is not something we force; it’s something the body naturally produces after enough time awake, once conditions are right,” Green says. “Improving deep sleep is about supporting the conditions that allow sleep to follow its natural architecture.”
Here are 10 tips to get deeper rest:
1. Keep the bedroom dark and cool
Keep your bedroom cool (65°F/18°C) to increase short wave sleep. A cool, quiet, and dark bedroom minimizes sensory input and supports the natural drop in body temperature that accompanies sleep onset.
2. Turn off your devices
Digital devices — including phones, laptops and TVs — emit blue light, which has been shown to disrupt your body’s natural production of melatonin. As a result, you feel less sleepy and have a harder time falling asleep.
3. Use a sound machine
While pink noise (such as the sound of rustling leaves or waves crashing) can lull you into a state of relaxation, brown noise (like heavy rainfall or thunder) has been shown to bring you into a deeper sleep.
[READ White Noise for Sleep: Benefits, Risks and How to Use It Effectively]
4. Go to sleep earlier
The best way to get more deep sleep is simply to get more sleep. Allotting enough time and opportunity for a full night’s rest will allow for more deep sleep.
5. Don’t eat before bed
Avoid food and caffeine at least 3 hours before sleep to slow down your body and be ready when it’s time to go to bed.
6. Eliminate or reduce alcohol consumption
While alcohol may help you to fall asleep, even one drink may change sleep patterns and disrupt your ability to achieve deep, restorative sleep. It also suppresses REM sleep particularly in the second half of the night.
7. Take a magnesium supplement
While melatonin is commonly known to help with sleep, magnesium has been shown to play an important role in sleep as well. Studies have shown that it can influence the neurotransmitters associated with sleep to help us feel relaxed and calm, which can promote better sleep.
Talk to your doctor about taking a magnesium supplement.
8. Exercise
Regular moderate-intensity aerobic exercise has many benefits, including helping the body more easily achieve the deep sleep stage.
9. Wake up at the same time
REM sleep tends to increase toward the morning, so consistent wake-up times can help protect those later REM cycles. This helps anchor the body’s internal clock, which strongly influences when REM sleep occurs and supports REM-rich sleep in the early morning hours.
10. Get enough sleep regularly
As with deep sleep, getting enough shut-eye regularly is crucial for the REM stage. Chronically short sleep disrupts normal REM, especially later in the night. Ensuring adequate sleep allows the brain to progress through its natural sleep architecture and express REM more fully.
[READ: Melatonin vs. Magnesium: Which One Helps You Sleep Better?]
Other Health Metrics to Improve Sleep
Although wearables can’t directly measure brain activity like a medical sleep study can, your wearable device can track several key physiological markers that can tell you how well you’re sleeping and what stage of sleep you’re in.
These metrics include:
— Heart rate and resting heart rate
— Heart rate variability
— Blood oxygen saturation (SpO2)
Once you understand what these numbers mean, you can use them to identify patterns and fine-tune your habits to improve your sleep.
Heart Rate and Resting Heart Rate
Your health tracker monitors your heart rate and resting heart rate, and understanding both of these metrics can help you improve your sleep:
— Heart rate. Your heart rate is the number of times your heart beats per minute in that moment. It fluctuates regularly depending on activity, emotions, temperature and medications.
— Resting heart rate. Your resting heart rate is when you are relaxed and calm. This is an important metric that shows how good your cardiovascular health is. A lower resting heart rate typically indicates that your heart works efficiently and doesn’t need to exert extra effort to pump blood through your body.
While the typical resting heart rate for adults is 60 to 100 beats per minute, heart rates can vary at different times. Emotions, weight, fitness level and age all affect resting heart rate.
When you feel anxious or stressed, your brain floods your system with cortisol. This hormonal spike accelerates your heart rate and keeps your mind in overdrive, creating a state of restlessness that makes it harder for you to fall — and stay — asleep.
Lowering your heart rate before bed can help you improve the quality of your sleep by allowing your body to enter deeper, more restful sleep.
Before you go to bed, use your health tracker to check your heart rate.
Helpful ways to relax and lower the heart rate include:
— Time your meals. It’s common for your heart rate to become elevated after eating due to the increased blood flow to help your stomach and intestines digest food. Give your body enough time to properly digest by making sure to eat your last meal at least 3 to 4 hours before you go to bed.
— Mind what you eat and drink. Foods that are packed with sugar, carbs, sodium and spices can cause your heart to beat faster. Caffeine and alcoholic beverages can also spike your heart rate.
— Relax your mind. Yoga, meditation, mindful breathing and grounding techniques can help you calm your mind and lower your heat rate.
— Try aromatherapy. Certain essential oils — like chamomile and lavender — have been shown to enhance relaxation and have calming effects. You can add essential oils to a bedtime bath, diffuser or room spray.
— Read a book. Reading a cozy, light-reading book promotes relaxation by allowing the mind to focus on the narrative rather than your racing thoughts or scrolling on your phone.
Once your heart rate is closer to your resting heart rate number, you’re ready for bed!
Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
Heart rate variability is different from heart rate in that it measures the average time between beats, which vary slightly. The higher the HRV, the better, because it indicates a faster recovery time from stress or exercise.
Your wearable device can pick up unusual patterns in HRV while you sleep, which may indicate sleep problems.
There’s no single “normal” HRV for adults. Higher measures indicate better cardiac adaptability, while dips can signal stress or fatigue. Healthy adults often have averages around 40 to 50 milliseconds, and younger people often have higher readings than older adults. The key is tracking your personal baseline over time.
“Two of the best ways to improve heart rate and heart rate variability are to exercise and to treat any underlying sleep disorder,” Kuhlmann says.
Blood Oxygen Saturation (SpO2)
Your wearable also tracks your blood oxygen saturation level, or SpO2, which is the percentage of red blood cells carrying oxygen for your body to use. A normal, healthy blood oxygen saturation level is typically 95% to 100%. Readings of 92% or less, especially if persistent, require immediate medical consultation .
SpO2 levels have become a key indicator of sleep apnea. Research shows that tracking drops of SpO2 levels due to interrupted breathing can effectively signal an underlying sleep disorder.
In fact, several wearables have earned Food and Drug Administration-clearance to screen for apnea risk by analyzing overnight oxygen trends alongside other physiological symptoms.
To improve your SpO2 levels and alleviate sleep apnea symptoms, try these tips:
— Change sleeping positions. For many people, sleep apnea symptoms are worse when on your back. The best sleeping positions for sleep apnea are typically on your side to help keep your airway open, so use pillows or special devices to help you stay on your side. However, this only works best in mild cases. For moderate to severe cases, you may need to see your health care provider.
— Use nasal strips. Nasal strips help open the nasal airways to improve breathing during sleep, particularly in people with nasal congestion or nasal valve collapse. In some people, nasal dilating strips may help improve snoring and overall oxygenation. However, these strips don’t address sleep apnea, as that is a problem with the throat.
When to See a Health Care Provider
If your sleep doesn’t improve with these strategies using your health data, it may be time to talk with your health care provider.
Health care providers who can help you with your sleep include:
— Primary care physician. Your PCP acts as the first line of defense by ruling out common underlying issues, like iron deficiency or thyroid imbalances, and providing referrals to specialized physicians.
— Sleep medicine specialist. Sleep medicine experts conduct in-depth diagnostic tests, such as sleep studies (known as polysomnography), to identify and treat sleep disorders, like sleep apnea, chronic insomnia, narcolepsy or restless leg syndrome.
— Cardiologist. If you have difficulty lowering your heart rate, there may be an underlying heart condition that needs to be addressed. Talk to a cardiologist about your elevated heart rate to see if you may have blood pressure issues, anemia, hyperthyroidism or another heart condition.
Bottom Line
Using your wearable sleep tracker’s data can help you identify problematic patterns in your sleep, which lifestyle changes may be able to improve.
“Wearables can support individuals in removing disruptors and reinforcing positive habits,” Green says. “Overall, wearable data is most useful when it promotes long-term sleep health and awareness.”
More from U.S. News
Winter Safety: 8 Health Risks Seniors Should Know
Does Medicare Cover Rare Diseases?
What Is a Long-Term Care Facility? Types and Costs
Hacking Your Deep Sleep Score: Turning Wearable Data Into Cognitive Gains originally appeared on usnews.com
