I’ve been stuggling with how to get better sleep tonight for over two years now, and I’ve taken a number of steps to try and figure it out. It’s amazing that something I took completely for granted has now become a centerpiece of my daily existence. If I haven’t been able to figure this out in two years, how about the people who never figure it out.

I think I may be on to something, though, which has only been available for a short while…

There are a few of these monitors on the market today – it first seemed to start with “smart alarm clocks” that used the accelerometer in your smartphone to analyse how much you moved at night (the smartphone would rest on your mattress beside the pillow at night) and then convert that movement into a sleep phase. It produced a cool looking graph of your sleep, but it was pretty crude. But then again it was sold as an alarm, not a sleep monitor.

Now you can get whole-life monitors like the Jawbone UP and the FitBit that do much more than track your sleep (they use an accelerometer as well). They can tell you how many steps you took today, how far you ran, how many calories you consumed – all kinds of data.

But the item I ended up with is entirely for sleep – The Zeo Sleep Monitor. It uses a headband for picking up brain activity (not an accelerometer) and then transmits the data to your smartphone for logging. Then the smartphone uploads this same data to their user website for further analysis.

The Zeo system calculates the value of your sleep by taking the total restorative sleep (total sleep + deep sleep + REM sleep) and subtracting the sleep stealers (time awake + number of times awake). This calculation they call a ZQ. For a 50 year old like me the ZQ should be about 69, with about 4 awakening a night. For your average 20 year old, the score would be 84 with 2 awakenings.

My score ranges from about 45 to a high of 78. So some nights it’s pretty good. But the big disruptor for me is the number of awakenings (and the amount of time I’m awake) – between 10 and 15 times/night.

Without this kind of insight into my actual sleep patterns, I would have no idea where to focus on solving the problem. Now I know – if you can reduce the awakenings, you’re score will go up and you’ll feel better in the morning.

I have to think that this kind of data could be so valuable to so many people – who know that they don’t sleep well. But that’s like saying “my car doesn’t run”. Without some detailed information about the actual performance (whether it’s poor idling or low-REM sleep) you’re left guessing.

And I’d prefer not to guess. Now I just need to figure out all the known contributors to fragmented sleep!

Posted by Doug at BuildBetterSleep.com