How does Apple Watch tell you are sleeping?
Sleep tracking, which uses your motion to detect sleep when you wear Apple Watch to bed and the Sleep Focus is active.
While you're sleeping, your device tracks the beat-to-beat changes in your heart rate, known as heart rate variability (HRV), which fluctuate as you transition between light sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep stages.
The Apple Watch is one of the best sleep trackers around and you can use it to create a routine and cultivate better sleep habits. The CDC recommends adults get at least seven hours of shut-eye a night, and the Apple Sleep app can help you get on track.
But “in terms of tracking light, deep, and REM sleep, basically all of the devices performed at only a medium level of accuracy,” says Chinoy. Translation: There's only about a 50-percent chance your data is accurate. “These devices really shouldn't be looked at for sleep staging at this point,” Chinoy adds.
Sleep duration: By tracking the time you're inactive, the devices can record when you fall asleep at night and when you stir in the morning. Sleep quality: Trackers can detect interrupted sleep, letting you know when you're tossing and turning or waking during the night.
As you know, with the right app, your Apple Watch can track your steps, heart rate, and calories burned. But, did you know it can also detect sleep apnea, the duration of your REM cycle, how long it takes you to fall asleep and figure out if you have a snoring problem?
Apple is more focused on preparing your bedtime schedule, whereas AutoSleep is more focused on accurately measuring your sleep metrics and trends. The good news is that together you can create the best of both worlds, using AutoSleep for accurate sleep metrics and the Apple Sleep app to assist you preparing for sleep.
All the stages of sleep are necessary, and none is better than any other. You need a balance of around 25% REM and 25% of the deepest NREM sleep to maintain your health and wellbeing.
While both brands offer outstanding, high-quality wearables, Fitbit has more budget-friendly options, superior battery life, and better health and fitness tracking than the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch edges out the Fitbit in terms of accuracy, convenience, and extra features, but it may be too pricey for some users.
The average Apple Watch user gets 49 mins of deep sleep per night—about 13% of total sleep time.
What is a good sleep score?
Sleep score takes into account both the duration of the sleep and the quality of the recovery. Sleep score 100 means your sleep is excellent: you have slept enough and most of it has been restorative. 80–99 stand for good sleep, 50–79 for moderate and 0–49 for poor sleep.
Based on your iPhone usage at night, Sleep on iPhone tracks and charts your Time In Bed. To receive sleep data from Apple Watch, sleep tracking must be enabled for at least 4 hours each night. To view your sleep history, open the Health app on your iPhone, tap Browse at bottom of the screen, then tap Sleep.
In order to track your sleep, you have to wear your Apple Watch to bed, you'll need to have turned sleep tracking on and your Apple Watch needs to be in Sleep mode - or Sleep Focus as it is now called.
The Apple Watch cannot measure blood pressure on its own. Blocking the blood flow by first putting a blood pressure cuff across your forearm and then releasing it while monitoring for abnormalities in your arteries is the only method that is both medically accurate and verified.
Do you know how often you snore? Or how loud it is when you do? With SleepWatch Snore Tracking, all SleepWatch users are able to record, listen to, and track their snoring from their Apple Watch or iPhone. You can now listen to your top snores and track where your snoring ranks on a scale from minimal to heavy.
If you want to detect snoring and other sounds, you will have to stick to the app in your iPhone app for now. As the name suggests, this feature automatically will track your sleep when you fall asleep with the Apple Watch. You'll still need to activate the alarm, if you want to be woken up at a certain time.
Apple Watch customers have access to two software as medical device features to detect heart arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation (AFib): the Irregular Rhythm Notification Feature (IRNF) and the ECG app.
Deep sleep and REM are defined by certain types of brainwaves and physiological states and these devices can estimate these states with about 80% accuracy.
Apple enhanced the built-in Sleep app on the Apple Watch in a big way in watchOS 9, introducing Sleep Stages. With Sleep Stages, the Apple Watch is able to tell you how much time you spent in REM, Core, or Deep sleep during the night, along with the amount of time that you were awake.
If you're under age 30, you may get two hours of deep sleep each night. If you're over age 65, on the other hand, you may only get a half hour of deep sleep each night, or none at all. There's no specific requirement for deep sleep, but younger people may need more because it promotes growth and development.
Does snoring indicate deep sleep?
Snoring associated with sleep apnea is least likely to occur in deep sleep, because it usually happens during REM when breathing is at its shallowest. So does snoring mean deep sleep? No it doesn't. REM sleep becomes very fragmented and interrupted by snoring so snorers aren't able to reach deep sleep.
Exercise regularly: Exercise has been shown to help people fall asleep faster and stay asleep. Working out might also increase the amount of time spent in deep sleep and improve the quality of deep sleep. Try to get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day, preferably more than three hours before bedtime.
People in pain or discomfort often have difficulty getting deep sleep. Loud noises and bright lights in or near the sleeping environment may also make it difficult to get deep sleep. To get the best possible sleep, sleepers should keep their bedroom dark, quiet, and cool with a comfortable bed and pillows.
Wear your watch to bed, and Apple Watch can estimate the time you spent in each sleep stage—REM, Core, and Deep—as well as when you might have woken up.
By leveraging the optical heart rate sensor on the watch, we measure heart rate and Heart Rate Variability (the time measured between each heartbeat) which combined with the accelerometer allows us to determine when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and what level of sleep you are in.
It might sound like an idea that gets revealed on April Fools' Day but this is actually real. Netflix has created socks that detect when you fall asleep so they can pause what you're watching. We've all been there, dozing off while desperately trying to finish a TV show marathon in the wee small hours.
The autonomous nervous system changes with sleep. Heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate are lowered to adapt to the reduced metabolic needs during normal sleep. Consequently, the mean heart-rate values drop from wakefulness to light sleep and further to deep sleep.
A small chart shows how many minutes you were awake, and how much time you spent in the each of the three basic sleep stages: REM (where most dreaming happens), deep (a restorative phase for mind and body), and core (Apple's term for light sleep, which is essentially the time not spent in REM or deep sleep).
In adults, 20% of total sleep time is spent in deep sleep (stage 3). Going with the recommended 7-9 hours of sleep each night, that means the average adult needs 84-108 minutes or 1.4-1.8 hours of deep sleep each night.
When we talk about light and deep sleep, we mean NREM sleep stages. Light sleep happens during stages 1 and 2, and deep sleep happens during stage 3. As we've seen above, all the stages of sleep are essential as they work together in a cycle, enabling our body to rest and recover during the night fully.
How many hours of REM sleep do you need?
On average you'll go through 3-5 REM cycles per night, with each episode getting longer as the night progresses. The final one may last roughly an hour. For healthy adults, spending 20-25% of your time asleep in the REM stage is a good goal. If you get 7-8 hours of sleep, around 90 minutes of that should be REM.
The takeaway. Spending around 90 minutes in REM sleep each night is considered healthy for most adults, though it depends on the person. If you fear you're spending too little or too much time asleep, it's time to get your sleep hygiene in check.
Tap on your profile icon in the upper right-hand corner. Tap on “Account.” Scroll down to “Security and Privacy” and tap on “Manage access and devices.” You will see the most recent devices active on your account.
The phone has an accelerometer sensor built in which is very sensitive and when placed in your bed we have a record of your movements over the night. In deep sleep your muscular movements are suppressed and so in this phase the sleep graph becomes almost flat.
You fell asleep watching Netflix. But the second you get into bed you're wide awake. Lying in bed unable to fall asleep is often called conditioned or learned arousal, says sleep-medicine specialist Philip Gehrman, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.
| Age | Heart rate when awake (bpm) | Heart rate when asleep (bpm) |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 years | 98–140 | 80–120 |
| 3–5 years | 80–120 | 65–100 |
| 6–11 years | 75–118 | 58–90 |
| 12–15 years | 60–100 | 50–90 |
During sleep, it is normal for a person's heart rate to slow down below the range for a typical resting heart rate. Between 40 to 50 beats per minute (bpm) is considered an average sleeping heart rate for adults, though this can vary depending on multiple factors.
| Age | Normal Resting Heart Rate |
|---|---|
| Children 5 to 6 years old | 75 to 115 bpm |
| Children 7 to 9 years old | 70 to 110 bpm |
| Children 10 years and older and adults (including seniors) | 60 to 100 bpm |
| Athletes in top condition | 40 to 60 bpm |