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Diy shock alarm clock6/22/2023 "Only a handful of devices have some sort of validation study to back them, and I think only one is FDA approved." "Some wearables claim to know when you are in a light sleep and wake you in an 'optimal' window of 30 minutes, but they are not always that accurate," she told me. I asked Christine Buske what she thought of this kind of tech. But there are so many similar services out there that claim to do the same thing, like the popular app Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock and the website. Jawbone's Smart Alarm claims to figure out your optimal wake up time based on 90 minute sleep cycles and then gently vibrate when it's the best time for you to wake up. Not only do these alarms vibrate, but they also promise to vibrate at the 'right' time. There are plenty of examples, but Jawbone and Fitbit were among the first to introduce it. Jawbone coined the term 'smart alarm', but I'll use it to describe a plethora of wearables that have bolted on a vibrating alarm to health and fitness features. Neuroscientist Christine Buske, who has a PhD in cell and systems biology and runs the Bench2Business blog, told me that my obsession makes sense: "Yes, it is a bit like knowing you need to get up at 5am to catch a flight, and not sleeping well all night because you are worried you will miss the flight." (A feeling we probably all know well.) I asked a sleep researcher whether my current obsession with getting to the bottom of how we wake up and what stimuli we use is just weird, or could I actually be onto something? The problem? There has been less research into this than some of the other health and wellbeing habits that wearable tech is addressing. So it looks like there's a valid interest here in how that 20 to 30 minutes of still being a bit drowsy can be best spent. A study called The Process of Awakening by Thomas Balkin and Allen Braun found that: "Awakening from sleep entails rapid re-establishment of consciousness followed by the relatively slow (20-30 min later) re-establishment of alertness." Instead, it can take a surprisingly long amount of time for your brain to switch into the wakefulness state. And what's important for us to understand here is it's not just a simple case of a switch turning on and off, which anyone who's had trouble waking up in the past will know all too well. You could read about this subject for days, but basically there are at least 11 neurotransmitters and hormones that play a role in the sleep-wake cycle, from glutamate to dopamine. But really it's a massively complex series of multiple processes, as all of your different brain centres respond differently between the states of sleep and wakefulness. Bits of your brain that were off are now on again, right? Well, kinda. You might think that waking up is a simple process. From there we're interested in how wearable tech can make this process even nicer or if we can 'game' it and use wearables to supercharge our morning routines instead. There are also many wearables and apps built on the premise that they can track your sleep cycle and wake you up at the optimal point.īut all of this talk about waking up got us wondering just how important the way you wake up really is to the quality of your sleep beforehand and your mood afterwards. Some of the most popular devices have incorporated smart or vibrating alarms, which slowly vibrate you out of bed rather than wake you up with a loud alarm. We've seen plenty of tech over the past few years that tried to make a play for your alarm clock. But the team has developed another device called the Wake Up Trainer that does essentially the same thing, but is geared towards helping you get your lazy ass out of bed. Last month I wrote up a review of Pavlok, a wearable that delivers a mild electrical 'zap' to your arm to effectively train you to give up your bad habits over time. The aspect we're interested in here though is less about how tech aims to get a handle on the quality of your zzz's, and more about how it aims to wake you up once you're done. These sensors track your movements during sleep then present the data to you so you can adjust your behaviour accordingly if you spent the whole night rolling around or getting up to pee. Depending on the product, this is mostly achieved by hooking sensors up to you or your bed. There are many, many devices on the market that claim to help you get a better night's sleep.
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