Hello Sense Sleep Monitor Tracks the Quality of Your ZZZs: Sleep tracking made easy (image via Hello Facebook)
Ah, to get a good night’s sleep. If only it were that easy for everybody. If you’re an insomniac, like me, you know how precious even 10 winks are, much less 40. Those of us who are sleep deprived try to catch them where and when we can, but we’re often left tired and listless. I’ve been so desperate to understand my sleeplessness that I volunteered for a sleep study many years ago and was told in a hushed, conspiratorial whisper that the doctors would probably just prescribe me Valium. Besides being surprised by this admission, I wanted to understand my insomnia and rid myself of it, not mask it. Now, there’s a way to track sleep at home with the Hello Sense sleep monitor.
Sleep Tracking Devices
There are tracking devices for seemingly everything anymore. Constantly losing your keys? Add a tracker tab to the ring. Your pets always pulling a Houdini on you? Get them a pet tracking collar or chip. In fear of losing your luggage — you get the idea. As far as sleep tracking devices, it was really only a matter of time before they hit the market. If you’re wondering what’s the point of a device to tell you you didn’t sleep well when your body, brain and mind know full well what the score is, tracking the quality of your sleep is far more important than you may have previously thought. Why? Because it can give you insight into what may be holding you back from a full night of quality rest.
Hello Sense Sleep Monitor
This new sleep tracker from Hello Sense promises to help you better understand your sleep environment along with resting and waking patterns. You can liken it to keeping a journal where you write down whatever you ate or drank in a given day, the times you partook in the meals or beverages, the time you got up in the morning, the time of day you first hit that invisible brick wall and you feel your energy flagging. Journals can help us figure out all sorts of things relating to catalysts that might be the culprit behind dozens or problems, not just lack of sleep. With a sleep monitor, a lot of that is done for you.
Hello Sense Sleep Monitor: Sleep tracker (image via Hello Sense Facebook)
How Do Sleep Trackers Work?
The Hello Sense sleep monitor uses a small spherical device that resembles a globe crosshatched with rubber bands. It’s actually a lot more attractive than I’ve described it. Anywho, along with the bed stand unit there’s a small sensor you clip to the edge of your pillow for detecting movement, as in the tossing and turning kind. That sensor then feeds information to the glowing ball sitting on your night table where it stores all of the information until it’s time to rise and shine. The ball contains a number of sensors for measuring things like light, ambient temperature, sound, humidity, proximity and even airborne particles.
Tracking Sleep Patterns with Apps
As you may have figured, there’s an app involved. Available for both Android and iOS, it lets you control every feature of the device and view your sleep stats with a simple interface that’s super easy to navigate and quickly adjust to while offering detailed info on various parameters surrounding your nightly experience. Besides monitoring air quality, light, room temp, how much you moved and if there were any noises during the course of the evening, it purportedly figures out how much deep sleep you actually got, if any. While your body knows whether or not you sleep like a baby, the data can at the very least help you adjust your sleep environment. If you get one, you really ought to consider keeping a daily journal as well, until you get it all sorted out.
Deep sleep leads to dreaming: Wouldn’t it be nice to dream once in a while?
