I’m one of those lucky people who has no problem sleeping at night, in fact I get quite a lot of it. Anytime the topic comes up my friends seem jealous that I comfortably rack up an average or 8 or 9 hours per night, which is more than the national average. My worry is why; after all of that sleep do I often wake up feeling tired and lethargic? I had put it down to ‘over sleeping’ but as I’m not getting crazy amounts of rest I wasn’t sure that this was the sole reason.
Recently I got a S+ by ResMed to try (it’s the worlds first non contact sleep monitor) to find out what was actually going on after drifted off at night. Thankfully you don’t have to wear any annoying wristbands or attach yourself directly to any other technology as the S+ device simply sits next to your bedside. It’s really straightforward and quick to set up, u simply connect it up to your smartphone phone via Bluetooth and then download the free S+ app from the app store.
As soon as you are paired up with the device and open up the app you are good to go. I wasn’t sure how accurate a sleep tracker like the S+ would be but I was impressed after seeing that it tracks your actual breathing pattern (you can play about with the types of breath you take and see the graph change). As well as your breathing it monitors other things that can impact your sleep like the room temperature and the level of light in your room. If these are too high or too low you can adjust them to ensure you are not disturbed as often during the night.
As I said earlier, getting to sleep is pretty easy for me but one of the functions I like on the S+ is the drift function, which plays gentle calming music (quietly) through your smartphone until you ‘drift’ off to sleep. As soon as you are asleep it stops automatically which I thought was very clever too. Even though I don’t need to, I use this use this function often as I find it really relaxing! If you are an over thinker at night then there is also a mind clear tool that lets you record or write down all of your thoughts to help you clear your head.
When you wake up after your sleep the S+ app provides you with a sleep score and a breakdown of how well (or poorly) your nights sleep was. After a few nights recording my sleep I was really surprised to discover that even though I was ‘sleeping’ for 8 or 9 hours I was getting less than an hours deep sleep per night and waking up on average 9 or 10 times for around 10 minutes or so each time. With the majority of my sleep being so light and interrupted it was obvious why I was often waking up feeling a little tired still.
So how can you improve your sleep? Well based on your sleep report the S+ provides you with tips each day on things that may help. It’s really a case of trying this out and seeing what works for you and how your sleep improves over time. I’ve found that once you are able to understand what is going on when you drift off at night you can really set about working to make it better.
And the benefits of good sleep are significant – everything from our health and mental wellbeing and ability to exercise and work well are affected by the quality of our sleep, so if it’s not working for you, you really need to address it to get the rest of your life in balance.
The S+ by ResMed is available from Amazon, currently for the promotional price of £99.
This post has been written in partnership with ResMed however all of the opinions and words about the S+ are my own.
