Sleep quality can have a big impact on our overall health and wellbeing. But how do we know if the sleep we’re getting is good enough?
Health Tech World spoke with sleep scientist Gary Garcia-Molina about why it’s so important to get a good, and well-monitored, night’s sleep.
Research by smart bed company Sleep Number has found that sleep restoration could potentially be monitored through unobtrusive measures like heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), instead of through polysomnography (PSG).
PSG is the gold standard of studying sleep but must be done at a sleep center or hospital and requires being hooked up to sensors during sleep. Using metrics like heart rate and HRV could make monitoring sleep restoration more practical.
Data for the study was collected using Sleep Number’s SleepIQ® technology, which is embedded in every 360 smart bed and conducts one of the largest real-world sleep studies every night. To date, it has leveraged and learned from nearly 12bn hours of sleep data from 1.5bn sleep sessions.
What did the latest Sleep Number data find?
The research that Sleep Number presented at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) 43rd annual Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference (EMBC) found that markers of sleep restoration (which is when your body uses sleep to repair and replete the cellular components that keep you functioning) could potentially be monitored through unobtrusive measures like heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), instead of through polysomnography (PSG). This is important because it shows that potentially using metrics like heart rate and HRV could make monitoring sleep restoration more practical, instead of having to rely on getting a PSG test at a sleep center or hospital.
The data was collected using Sleep Number’s SleepIQ® technology, which is embedded in every 360 smart bed. It uses ballistocardiograph readings and high-resolution, full-body, effortless sensor recordings, as well as signal processing and machine learning methods, to automatically collect and analyze billions of data points and key biometrics each night.
The smart bed allows the user to monitor their sleep quality. What are the benefits of monitoring your own sleep?
Sleep impacts our overall health – so being able to get accurate daily readings of your heart rate, HRV, and other metrics, for example, can allow people to have a better understanding of their sleep behaviours and potential health implications. People can also use the data to help inform conversations with their physicians about their sleep health.
Additionally, while a PSG test may be more well–known in the sleep space, it’s not as convenient as being able to monitor your own sleep, since it can only be done at a sleep centre or hospital where a patient is hooked up to sensors while they’re sleeping. The 360 smart bed can collect accurate sleep data from home (which reflects much more closely real-life sleep), and they’re also effortless to use – they don’t require a person to wear or charge anything.
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on sleep for many people. Could sleep monitoring help?
Quality sleep is the foundation of good sleep health and is associated with overall health and wellbeing. But how can you know if the sleep you are getting is quality sleep? Every night, SleepIQ delivers individualized sleep insights by automatically sensing and effortlessly responding to the needs of sleepers. It measures sleep time, restful and restless sleep, heart rate variability, breath rate and more. AI and data science enable the automatic adjustments to improve sleep and provide actionable insights for consumers, connecting quality sleep to sleep health through highly accurate, longitudinal biometric data collected during sleep sessions. Over time, you can review your data, look for major changes and discuss with your doctor.
Interestingly, since the pandemic began, Sleep Number sleepers have gained an average of 12 total minutes of sleep each night and an average of 11 minutes of restful sleep per night. This may indicate that the general population is likely sleeping more than they think but are lacking the tools – like a 360 smart bed – to fully understand their sleep quality.
What’s next for Sleep Number?
As you know, earlier this year, Sleep Number presented data at SLEEP 2021 showing results of a predictive model of COVID-19 infection based on sleep metrics. The data provided further evidence for the benefits of the 360 smart bed and SleepIQ as potential devices for evaluating population health.
To our knowledge, this was the first study to evaluate real-world, longitudinal data collected unobtrusively and non-invasively during sleep, using a smart bed platform.
Sleep Number has leveraged and learned from over 11 billion hours of sleep data gathered from over 1.4 billion sleep sessions so far and we look forward to using this data to further sleep science and improve healthcare quality and clinical outcomes. In 2020, Sleep Number announced a collaboration with Mayo Clinic allowing their researchers to deepen their understanding of sleep and sleep disorders, and their relationship with health and disease leveraging our data. One of the studies will investigate the prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea and determine the presence of comorbid cardiovascular diseases in U.S. patients with Somali heritage. Another study will explore the relationship between disrupted sleep and markers of aging (i.e. telomere length, senescence, and chronologic EKG based on Mayo Clinic’s AI-driven technology).
Looking ahead, Sleep Number will present data at World Sleep 2022 evaluating real-time sleep stage detection using heart rate and HRV.
