Sleep Cycle iPhone App

[digitlnoize]

I just wanted to see what the sleep pros though of this. It's an alarm clock app that detects the amount of movement during sleep, then wakes you at the best stage of your sleep cycle within the time window that you set. It's been getting pretty good reviews from people, but what do you guys think?

http://www.lexwarelabs.com/sleepcycle/index.html

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[neurologist]

I just wanted to see what the sleep pros though of this. It's an alarm clock app that detects the amount of movement during sleep, then wakes you at the best stage of your sleep cycle within the time window that you set. It's been getting pretty good reviews from people, but what do you guys think?

http://www.lexwarelabs.com/sleepcycle/index.html

I think this is a good way to waste your money.

Actigraphy (the principle behind this) is used to differentiate between "sleep" and "wake," but I'm not aware that it's a reliable tool to actually differentiate between different sleep stages.

Movement in general is globally significantly reduced during sleep compared to wakefulness. While the device might (might) be able to take a stab at identifing REM sleep due to the further decrease in movement related to to associated atonia, I'd have a hard time buying that it can distinguish between stages I, II and III. So maybe it can wake you up in one of those stages rather than REM.

If there is any "undesirable" sleep stage to wake up from, it's probably stage III. Very "deep" sleep with the highest arousal threshold, and admittedly there is a possibility of inducing a parasomnia (confusional arousal, sleepwalking, etc) with external stimulus such as an alarm or other noise during that stage.

But let's look at "typical" sleep architecture: First of all, as you get older (presumably this is adults mostly using the device) you have a significant decrease in time spent in stage III, so just statistically, it's even less likely that you'll be getting up in this stage. Second, Stage III sleep usually occurs early in the night, not too long after sleep onset. Most people aren't setting their alarms to go off 2 or 3 hours after they go to sleep. Rather, they set them for 7 or 8 hours later, in the early morning, when REM sleep is more prominent. So odds are for the average person you'll be planning to get up during either REM or Stage II. While REM is somewhat "harder" to get up from than stage II, it's also statistically less frequent (25% vs about 50-60% for stage II).

So all in all, I don't buy that this is much of a benefit. I'd be interested in knowing if it's actually been tested during polysoms to see if it really can "identify" sleep stages.

 

[senaiboy]

Very interesting to see a specialist's say on this from the medical point of view, thanks for the input .

I bought this app 2 days ago just to try it out. As others, I did not have any expectations and was skeptical about it anyway. I'm someone who needed more than 3 separate alarms to wake me up (because without fail I always seem to slept through at least one of them).

My experience with this app is only for the past 2 nights, but it did make a big difference. Both times I've woken up half an hour before my alarm, and I did not even hear the alarm rang.

I'm not a sleep expert (we don't get taught much on sleep anyway), and it all might be just in my head. But with so many people vouching for it (and experiencing it myself), could actigraphy actually be useful for this purpose?

Think I'll be off to read up some journals about it.

 

[digitlnoize]

Thanks for the pro input...I'm a little skeptical myself, but there do seem to be a good number of people vouching for it. I know a couple people who've tried it and said they felt like they were more refreshed on waking...

It's pretty cheap, maybe I'll take the plunge and be a guinea pig...

 

[Bobblehead]

I bought this app 2 days ago just to try it out. As others, I did not have any expectations and was skeptical about it anyway. I'm someone who needed more than 3 separate alarms to wake me up (because without fail I always seem to slept through at least one of them).

My experience with this app is only for the past 2 nights, but it did make a big difference. Both times I've woken up half an hour before my alarm, and I did not even hear the alarm rang.

While trying to avoid the pitfalls of internet diagnosing, one of the most common reason for difficulties in waking up is behavioral sleep restriction (i.e. you go to bed too late because you're spending too much time on SDN, etc.) before you start invoking all sorts of other things like sleep apnea or reverse first night effects from trying out the app.

I did some looking around and there are efforts to try to use body movements to stage sleep in favor of the usual EEG criteria and there are some interesting pubmed references about evaluating body movements in older adults using younger adults as control.

It's not made it into clinical practice and currently actigraphy is mainly used to investigate circadian rhythm abnormalities. Aside from invoking sleep inertia in combination with behavioral sleep restriction/chronic partial sleep deprivation causing N3 sleep rebound and thereby making you feel like a zombie for the first part of the day, I'm not sure how arranging to awaken from N1 sleep vs. N3 sleep would make your day any better.

Since the software is on $0.99 maybe someone can spring for a clinical trial..