It knows when you are sleeping,
It knows when you’re awake.
It keeps a record of all this,
And reports to you next day.
Big guy prowling around your house with a list? Animal droppings on your shingles? No, that’s something else entirely. This has nothing to do with naughty or nice. It’s all about the deep sleep.
If you are one of those people who gets up more tired than when they went to bed, perhaps you can benefit from a new technological innovation called Zeo Personal Sleep Coach. It’s a gadget that monitors your sleep patterns and gives you a chart of how restfully you slept overnight. The hardware is coupled to an online self-discovery program that helps you interpret the results. Plus you get guided coaching emails with sleep tips and advice.
The technology isn’t like anything you’ve seen before. You wear a special headband that contains sensors to wirelessly monitor electrical signals produced by the brain. You don’t need to wear any Frankenstein caps or smear goo on your forehead. This is a soft fabric band with silverized-fabric sensors embedded in the cloth. Pretend you’re going out for a jog and put on the headband before you go to bed.
The companion piece of equipment looks like a normal bedside alarm clock. Why, it even shows the date and time and works like an alarm clock. But that’s where the simplicity ends. The display shows a graph of your overnight sleep activity. It shows those times when you were lightly sleeping, deeply sleeping and in the REM sleep cycle. It will compare last night’s sleep with the night before and store up to two weeks of data for your review.
What does it all mean? You can have the bedside display dump the data to an SD memory card and then plug that into your computer to upload the data to an online sleep journal. You’ll get sleep scores to tell you how you are doing and email messages with tips for better sleep. All this feedback is designed to help you solve the mystery of why you aren’t getting the restful sleep you want.
If you just aren’t the type who goes out like a light and then needs a fire alarm to get you up in the morning, you may find that the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach has something to offer. There’s a lot of information on their site, including videos and a complete description of the equipment and how it works.
Sweet dreams!
