How Does Jawbone Up Track Sleep

Jawbone Up Fitness Band has the capability to track both day and night activities. As for the day, it is able the track the numbers of steps we are moving. When we change to night mode, it'll track our sleep pattern. So how does Jawbone Up track our sleep?



Different Kinds of Sleep

Before we study how Jawbone Up track our sleep, let us find out more about the different kinds of sleep and the sleep pattern. There are two types of sleep in general:
  • REM
  • Non-REM
REM (Rapid Eye Movement)

REM sleep (light sleep) is when the brain is partial awake. It doesn't know we are sleeping and the brain starts to work. You are awake of what's happening in the surrounding, and if your REM sleep is too long, you tend to feel tired when you are awake.

Researches say people dream during REM stage.

Non-REM (Non Rapid Eye Movement)

Non REM stage, or deep sleep is when we are totally knocked out. We go into deep sleep and this is when our muscles, cells, body are recovering. There are 4 stages of Non-REM:
  • Stage 1 - Transition from awake to sleep
  • Stage 2 - Deeper than Stage 1 and body starts to heal and recover
  • Stage 3 and 4 - Very deep sleep. Body is in full gear of recovering
The longer the Non-REM stage you are in, the more you'll feel fresh when you are awake.

Possible to Sleep 2 hours a night?

In Tim Ferriss's 4 Hour Body, he had mentioned that if you split your sleep into 20 min interval (6 times per day), and by getting into deep sleep each time, you'll have more than enough rest with 2 hours of Non-REM sleep. Imagine how many things you can accomplish with the 22 hours per day!

Jawbone Up Sleep Tracking

Jawbone Up fitness band therefore allow us to monitor our sleep. We will toggle between light and deep sleep. You can adjust your life in order to get as much deep sleep as possible. Some of the possible ways are:
  • Drink a glass of milk 2 hours before you sleep
  • Get yourself really tired, like exercise or jog before you sleep
  • Tune the temperature to 25 degree
  • Aromatherapy
  • Soft music
  • Lava lamp
  • Warm lightings, etc ...
These are some of the possible methods to improve your sleep.

Back to the question, how does Jawbone Up tracks our sleep? Jawbone Up team uses sophisticated algorithm to calculate the movement of our hands. We tend to move or jerk slightly when we are in light sleep. Jawbone Up will sense these movement and update their tracking accordingly.

When we are in deep sleep, we'll totally pause down there. No movement, no sound, nothing. Our bodies are recovering and Jawbone Up wristband knows about it. It'll track this automatically.

In the morning, you can sync your fitness band and see how's your night sleep. Is it ideal? Are you feeling fresh or tired? How are you going to improve your deep sleep? Change a small lifestyle habits and monitor your sleep again. Fine tune your life until you achieved your target deep sleep. The ideal case is at least 50% deep sleep.

So are you monitoring your deep sleep? What are the ways you've done to improve it? Care to share in the comments below? Thanks!