{"id":1209590,"date":"2023-12-07T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-07T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1209590"},"modified":"2023-12-07T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T20:00:00","slug":"what-i-learned-from-tracking-my-sleep-with-an-apple-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1209590","title":{"rendered":"What I Learned From Tracking My Sleep With an Apple Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"

After having the same Apple Watch for six years, I was recently moved to upgrade to a newer model\u2014partly because newer versions simply have more features, partly because I am curious about my bodily processes, and also because I am an impulsive spender convinced that every new purchase will be the one that brings me to the precipice of pure wellness. In the week that I\u2019ve had my fancy new doodad, I have not become a paragon of perfect health, but I have gained some insights into my activity levels and, importantly, my sleeping habits. I am a firm believer in over-preparing for luxurious sleep sessions<\/u><\/a>, so I wanted to see if the data my watched gleaned from my body overnight backed up my insistence that better sleep is possible through investments in things like fancy pillow sprays and silky sheets<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

What the Apple Watch measures overnight<\/h2>\n

The Apple Watches you get nowadays come preloaded with a Sleep app that will estimate the amount of time you spend in REM, core sleep, and deep sleep, provided you wear your device when you hop in the sheets. It\u2019s important to know that you have to pre-define your sleep schedule within the app for this to work; it doesn\u2019t necessarily magically detect that you\u2019ve gone to bed. I set mine to be from 1 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. after some internal debate about whether I wanted to lie to it (which would be useless) or be honest about what kind of person I am and when I actually go to bed. To get data from the watch, you also need to give it at least four hours of sleep to work with per night. You can <\/em>set separate schedules for weekdays, weekends, or any other days you have special requirements or schedules.<\/p>\n

When you wake up every day, the watch will figure out that you\u2019re up and at \u2018em and halt sleep monitoring. Then, you can see a little chart that estimates how long you were in each sleep phase. The sleep phases are defined like this:\u00a0<\/p>\n