Your SOUND & SILENT night

KATY: What tech, if any, do you recommend for helping people sleep better?

MARTIN: The first thing I suggest is to use something to track your sleep. There are lots of sleep trackers out there. The Fitbit will work as will the Apple watch and there are some free apps that listen to your breath pattern as you’re sleeping, one of which is Sleep Cycle, to work out what stage of sleep you’re in. The trick to waking up refreshed is to not wake up from deep or REM sleep. Sleep Cycle works out which stage of the cycle you’re in and rather than just setting off the gentle alarm at a set time, it goes off during a half-hour window, set by you the night before, at a time when it thinks you’re in light sleep. It works on flight mode and just uses the phone’s microphone to listen to your breathing rate.

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