Getting a good night’s sleep is one of the key components of any healthy lifestyle. However, when you have a very busy schedule, you might find yourself skipping out on sleep in lieu of other things. And while this may seem like a good idea at the time, when it starts to become a habit, it can have very detrimental effects on your health. If you find that you struggle to get enough sleep on a consistent basis, sleep tracking is a tool that could be very helpful for you. By developing a better understanding of your sleep patterns, you can take steps to correct them.
Benefits of Getting Enough Sleep
There are so many incredible benefits to getting enough sleep every night. When you sleep well at night, you are much more likely to feel focused and be productive during the day. Getting enough sleep also reduces your stress levels, which is another factor that can contribute to productivity. Additionally, getting enough sleep gives your body time to heal itself, which means you will get sick less often and heal from injuries faster.
What Happens When You Don’t Sleep
It’s also important to be aware of what happens to your body when you don’t get enough sleep at night. Of course, everyone has the occasional night where they don’t sleep well, and although it can be frustrating, it shouldn’t harm your health. However, when you consistently don’t get enough sleep, your immune system suffers, which can lead to a wide variety of larger health problems. Additionally, you will feel far less alert during the day, making it difficult to be productive. A lack of sleep also contributes to higher stress levels and mood swings, which can have a negative impact on your relationships with those around you.
How Sleep Tracking Can Help
Using a sleep tracking tool is a great way to get more insights in your sleep patterns so you can improve them. It will show you your patterns as you go through sleep cycles throughout the night, and you can keep track of the conditions that enable you to sleep better so you can improve your environment. Additionally, most sleep tracking tools come with an alarm function. This will wake you up at the end of a sleep cycle so that you wake up feeling refreshed, instead of jolting you out of the middle of a sleep cycle uncomfortably.
Popular Sleep Tracking Tools
There are a variety of incredible sleep tracking tools that you can use to improve the quality of your sleep. There are several apps for your smartphone that you can use – you just place the smartphone on your bed while you sleep and it tracks your breathing and movements. Two of the most popular are Sleep Cycle and Pillow. You can also use a smartwatch, like a FitBit or Apple Watch, to track your sleep, or even try Oura, which is a small wearable ring with tons of tracking features. There are also a few different sleep tracking pads, which you place under your bed and connect to your smartphone. Some of the most popular include Beautyrest and Emfit QS.