Stop Chasing Sleep Scores. Enhancing the Restorative Function of Sleep
Though in the sleep space we regularly hear products touting benefit of giving you “deeper sleep” or “more restorative sleep” and while these ideas sound appealing, they are fairly empty promises. Nice words, that sound convincing, but when you get down to it, what is this really about?
Often “deeper sleep” is used to reference less night time awakenings. “More restorative sleep” is maybe sometimes measured by more time in deep sleep, but if you’ve been paying attention to what we’re doing here at Affectable Sleep, that time isn’t the point. After all, you wouldn’t measure your diet based on how much time you spend chewing, would you?
At Affectable we’re focused on Restorative Sleep Function. The physiological work your brain and body do during sleep providing the necessary recovery and repair for optimal health. But why do we talk about Restorative Sleep Function as a category and not the individual markers which make up this vital component of life?
A recent thread on LinkedIn shows how easy it is to go down a rabbit hole of data that make up Restorative Sleep Function. Spectral activity, delta power, odds ratio product, frequency bands, that’s before we get into sleep spindles and k-complexes, and the like.
While many people still struggle to understand the difference and value between deep sleep and REM sleep, introducing these highly technical measures of sleep would just add to the confusion.
There are enough sleep products on the market that just try to measure your sleep and give you a score, or try to get you to fall asleep faster, or sleep longer, with the thinking that more sleep is better health.
These sleep scores, charts, and metrics don’t always reflect what actually matters and they can confuse more than they clarify.
Sadly, Apple added to this confusion when they rebranded light sleep as “core sleep” to make it sound less…unimportant. But renaming it doesn’t change it’s role or limitations.
I will give Apple credit though, when they first released the Apple watch, they didn’t provide the usual hypnogram. Though these charts may look impressive, they are not very digestible. They give us data but then leave it us to interpret what it means.
At Affectable Sleep, we’re taking a different approach. We increase the restorative function of sleep without altering sleep time. So there is that word again restorative function. Because we’ve built the world’s thinnest, lightest, and most comfortable EEG headband, we could absolutely drown you in data about your brain activity during sleep. But what value do you get from having this information. The restorative function of sleep which isn’t just about the immediate brain response to the stimulation. It kicks off a cascade of hormones regulating everything from your immune system, metabolic function, and cardiovascular response. It primes your nervous system, moderates inflammation, consolidates memory, and so much more.
Enhancing sleep’s restorative function isn’t influencing one thing, it’s the culmination of all of your bodies health systems that are responsible for managing your health and wellbeing through the activity of most of the bodies organs which are all accessible through real-time neurostimulation during sleep. That’s what enhancing restorative function is all about. Not more sleep time, not falling asleep faster, or sleeping “deeper” but enhancing the neurological, biological, and physiological functions that make sleep valuable, and without which, we would die.
That’s why we focus on restorative sleep function. We think this is a middle ground between the fluffy jargon of “deeper sleep” and the overloading of data points.
We’re not here to judge your sleep, our mission is to directly enhance the functions of sleep, so you can live a better and healthier life tomorrow and all the tomorrows that follow.
