Since I wrote about how to stop being tired and start living with energy, I’ve had the chance to learn about (and use) a few new sleep gadgets. I’ve has an extremely limited amount of time I can dedicate to this blog lately and haven’t had time to write any full new articles. However, here is an update on the gadgets I’ve used to wake up feeling better in the morning:

Sunrise emulators — wake up lights

My trusty Philips HF3480 Wake-up Light — I use the sunrise function of this every morning to get off to a good start.

wake_up_light

It will slowly fade up the intensity of a natural light lamp, causing your body to adapt to it as if there was a sunrise, even if you have your blinds down or, as it is for me, you live far north and the sun doesn’t rise until late.

While waking up can still be just as brutal even in a light room, I find that getting out of bed is considerably easier with this than in a dark room and a normal alarm clock.

I’ve switched the alarm clock sound off though, because of the gadgets mentioned below.

Sleep tracking wrist watches

I’ve mentioned the SleepTracker Pro Sleep Monitoring Watch before as well. It uses your movement to determine what part of the sleep cycle you’re in, and wake you up feeling as refreshed as possible. It often works, and when it works it’s like magic — rather than waking me up, I’d feel like the alarm went off after I was already awake.

sleeptracker

I used this for a long time, until the wristband on it broke, and I figured that was t he perfect opportunity to try something new! Warmly recommended though, especially if the below options aren’t possible for you.

“There’s an app for that”

The Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock iPhone app actually does the same thing the sleep tracker does, using the builtin accelerometers in the phone. You place it face-down on your bed when you go to bed, and it measures your sleep cycles using your movements, waking you up at a good point.

Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock instruction

Sounds too good to be true at that price, but it works, producing nifty graphs of your sleep cycles as an added bonus! If you’ve got an iPhone, this is a no-brainer. I’ve been using this lately as a replacement for the sleep tracker and it’s worked beyond my expectations. Here’s one of my graphs from a one night this week:

sleepgraph

The real deal

Here’s one I am planning on testing shortly, but haven’t had the time to yet… the Zeo personal sleep coach actually uses a wireless headband to measure your brain activity, constructing an accurate graph of your sleep cycles and waking you up at a good point.

Zeo

I doubt this is worth the hefty price tag if all you want is to wake up refreshed, but for me I’d like to map out and understand as much as possible about sleep (especially in combination with my polyphasic sleep experiments, which I’m planning a new one of soon).