I am a terrible sleeper. My sleep habits range from not being able to fall asleep, falling asleep early and then waking up a million times, not sleeping at all or sleeping and then being utterly unable to wake up in the morning.
I usually find that when I am anxious or excited, it is hard to "shut off" and just fall asleep but that one seems pretty normal to me. Falling asleep early and waking up a million times is both because I sleep so erratically and have to pee all the time. Not sleeping at all happens from time to time and it the abso-fucking-lutely worst thing ever and even though my husband thinks I am just super lazy, I find myself so tired some mornings that getting out of bed is the most arduous chore imaginable.
None of these things make me feel confident that I get the best out of my sleep.
Enter Sleep Cycle. Sleep Cycle is an app for... you guessed it, helping with sleep. It's "about me" section describes it as "using a wake up phase that ends at your desired alarm time... will monitor signals from your body to wake you up softly when you are in the lightest possible sleep state". It uses a sensitive accelerometer to determine your sleep state and then it tallies up your whole night and ranks how well you slept.
In terms of an alarm, it is actually pretty good. Maybe (likely) it is placebo effect but when I hear the gentle waves of my morning alarm, I usually am in fact ready to wake up. This is vastly different from my former alarm that would often literally shake me out of sleep. neither options stop me from using the snooze button but with Sleep Cycle, it allows you 10 minutes of snooze and then you have to physically turn it off or it wont shut up and while gentle waves are lovely, nonstop on and on, they are insanity provoking.
That is the upside to the alarm, since using it I have been up earlier and easier and feeling less like someone just hit me over the head with bells.
The downside is that first off, I have to sleep with my phone. I am sure that sleeping in bed with your phone is bad for you. There is the all the electronic waves and stuff like that that is probably not healthy for you long term and there is the notion that in order to decompress and shut down, you should not bring your cell phone into bed. It is true that since sleeping with it, our relationship has intensified and it is the last thing I do before bed and the first thing I do when I wake up. My husband is jealous.
The other downside to this app is that seriously, how is it watching me when I sleep? Like, how creepy is that? AND, it is doing the worst job ever because last night, for example, it gave my sleep an 83%. 83!!?? I literally took 2 hours to just fall asleep, peed twice in the night and spent from 5am until 6:30am being uncomfortable and wishing for the morning to come. I would give that sleep a 50%. Max.
Summation is that I don't think I get the Sleep Cycle as a sleep monitoring device. I feel like it is impossible to monitor me effectively when you are just an iphone/ I hope that it is impossible to monitor me effectively when you ate just an iphone- or the end is sooner than we think.
Sweet dreams,
J
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