People want to gauge the type of sleep they're getting at night, but monitors to accurately measure all the key factors of sleep won't become available for another six months or longer.
Some have tried using their fitness sensors to better understand their sleeping habits. Used to measure daily activity, the monitors can also evaluate a person's motion at night. However, it's not an entirely accurate way to determine a good night's sleep.
"They're not measuring sleep, simply motion -- not muscle tone, brain waves, heart rate or eye movement," Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist who specializes in sleep disorders, told The Guardian. "You cannot infer quality of sleep from motion and tell what is crucial REM [rapid eye movement] sleep and what is not."
The recommended amount of sleep per night ranges between seven to nine hours. Sleep deprivation can cause several heart problems, high blood pressure, stroke or diabetes, according to WebMD.
"There's physical restoration component to sleep, including healing, as well as mental restoration component," Breus said. "During REM sleep in particular there's a cleaning process to get the trash out of there, and a strengthening process that occurs for the more important memories."
Other sensors claiming to track sleep include products like SleepRate. It comes with a chest strap to monitor heart rates, which could infer sleep, according to The Guardian.
Sleep therapists "use much more sophisticated machines" to monitor whether a person experiences a deep sleep. Future sleep gadgets will be equipped with these same monitors that can measure a person's heart rate, muscle tone, eye movement, breathing rate and brain waves.
"We expect [brain wave monitoring] to become a standard feature in most wearable devices, both fitness bands and smart watches, from now on," Ben Wood, the head of research at CCS Insight, told The Guardian.
