The statistics speak of insomnia as a serious health problem, with psycho-emotional origins, which afflicts many people and, in particular, one in five young people in Italy. The blame for a bad sleep is attributed, in part, also to modern technologies, computers and smartphones, online games and social networks that literally take sleep away from young people and many people by engaging entire nights spent awake.
Just from technology, however, comes a help to sleep better and to dream consciously wake up rested, these are mobile applications that are based on smartphone control sensors such as the iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy.
Let's see then what are the best applications for iPhone and Android to sleep better and if they really work to wake up refreshed.
READ ALSO: Best alarm clock applications for Android with custom alarms
Stages of sleep
Sleeping is not as simple as closing your eyes and turning your mind off.Sleep has about 4 stages :
- Phase N1: a transition period between wakefulness and sleep, which lasts about 5-10 minutes. Anything can wake us up at this stage, even body contractions and sudden involuntary movements.
- Phase N2: rhythmic brain activity that lasts for 50% of the entire sleep cycle. Body temperature starts to drop and heart rate slows down.
- Phase N3: Deep sleep with strong delta waves.
- REM sleep phase: a strange state in which the body is paralyzed, but the brain and body functions are active and where one also dreams intensely
These phases do not occur in sequence so the N3 can be followed by other N2s, for example and never get to dream.
However, for most people, a sleep cycle is completed in 90 minutes after falling asleep.
If you wake up in full sleep, in the REM phase or during deep sleep, you will be stunned and you will feel little rested even if 12 hours have passed. The light sleep period is the perfect time to wake up.
READ ALSO: Find out when to go to bed to wake up rested
How the apps that make us sleep better work
Let's stop for a moment to understand how to use these two apps and if they work .Before going to sleep, open the application and place the device on one side of the bed, on the mattress. It must also be connected to the power otherwise it will drain all the battery of the mobile phone. For the first few nights, the app wakes up at the time and, in the meantime, calibrates the movements. After a few days he will be able to wake us up at the best time in order to make us feel rested and fit.
These apps work well if you share a bed with another person. Since their movements are also recorded, the accelerometer can give false readings of the waking periods and therefore wake up at the wrong time. This depends on how and how much our partner moves during sleep. The bed also needs to be not too rigid otherwise the phone will not move and it becomes difficult to detect body movements. Finally, these applications need flexibility of at least 30 minutes which is a time window for the alarm clock and it will not be good for those who have to get up at a specified and fixed time. You can set a smaller time window, but it reduces the chances of finding an ideal awakening.
App to monitor sleep
Since we are able to determine roughly which sleep phase we enter from the level of movement of the body, these applications for iPhone and Android phones, thanks to their sensors, manage to manage sleep and wake up. The more movement in bed, the more likely it is to be a vigilant phase, while if the body is immobile, it means that it is a deep sleep phase.The best apps for iPhone and Android that help you sleep better and sleep are :
1) Sleepbot to record sounds and movements with smart alarm clock, for iPhone and Android, for free, described in another article as one of the best apps to control sleep at night.
2) Runtastic's Sleep Better is a free app that tells us if we slept well or not. Just set the alarm, plug the phone into an outlet and put it near us. Before going to sleep you can add information on the person's status, if it has been a busy day, if you have been drinking coffee or alcohol. When you're ready for bed, tap the Start button. When you wake up, you can also tell the application if a good dream or nightmare has been had. At the end you will get a report on how the night went to find out if it was a good sleep based on the information collected and also on the basis of the lunar cycle.
3) Pzizz is an app for Android and iPhone that plays a different soundtrack every time it is used to help you fall asleep. Pzizz says he can "solve the insomnia problem using his random algorithm using over 100 billion combinations that it's impossible to hear the same song twice.
4) Pillow (iPhone and iPad only) is free, integrates with the Health and iCloud app and offers many functions. The app is perfect for comparing sleep with other data on our health, to get an overview of our state. It also allows you to wake up at the optimal moment with a sweet sound (you can also set the "nap" mode for short rests of 20 minutes). When you wake up, you can view sleep statistics and hear the recorded noises that are made during the night.
5) Sleep as Android is an application only for Android phones that you can try for free to control our sleep. This is the most successful app on the Google Play store of this type and was originally just a smart alarm clock. Now it has become an app that manages sleep at night, cradling the person until gently awakening them. It is possible to record how much you sleep well at night, to determine the amount of hours of sleep has been considered "deep", to use alarm clocks with gradual volume and generate sounds to relax and fall asleep. With many statistics and graphs, the app is able to set the ideal time to go to bed and wake up refreshed.
6) Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock is an app only for iPhone and iPad and for Android, free. With this application you have to put your mobile phone under the pillow because the app tracks your sleep cycle and wakes you up at the right time, when you exit the REM cycle. Sleep Cycle is not as rich in features as Sleep As Android, but it also has many instructions on how to position the device on the bed and takes advantage of the iPhone sensors on the flat.
7) Snore Control is a free app only for Android that records snoring and words spoken during sleep. The beauty of this application is that, compared to a normal voice recorder, it is activated only when you say something and does not necessarily record the whole night.
8) Relax And Sleep for Android is an app to create relaxing melodies and combinations of sounds. You can generate a combination at random or choose from the many sounds available. The application uses tones and sounds that are scientifically proven to put people to sleep and keep them asleep in bed for a whole night.
9) Relaxing Melodies for Android and for iPhone.
This is not an application that helps you sleep but a musical app specialized in relaxing music and nature sounds. Thanks to the natural and calm sound effects, the mind relaxes until it falls asleep. The app has a sleep timer and can automatically turn off your cellphone after a set period of time so you don't have to keep your music on all night.
10) Sleepo for Android is an app for listening to relaxing sounds that promote sleep. There are sounds of rain, sounds of nature, sounds of the city and sounds of meditation.
11) Smart Sleep Manager (Android only) monitors our sleep during the night, records activities and makes the alarm ring around the indicated time, only when a deep sleep phase is not interrupted.
12) Sleepmeter Free does not use the sensors on the phone and must be filled in by hand by adding information and times when you went to sleep, like a diary of the night.
13) Relax and Sleep Hypnosis for Android and for iPhone is a meditation app that uses the recordings of Dr. Glenn Harrold expert in hypnosis and relaxation.
14) Rise - Sleep Better (Android and iPhone) is a sleep management app that includes four techniques to help us sleep better. These techniques include mindfulness meditation, guided imagery, progressive muscle relaxation and acceptance and commitment therapy. In addition, there is also a Sleep Dairy which allows you to record your progress and see how we slept the past few days.
15) Sounds for sleep, only for Android, is an application with relaxing sounds that make you fall asleep.
16) Relax Melodies - Sleep Sounds for Android and iPhone is another good application that uses the accelerometer sensor to monitor sleep phases.
17) Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock for Android and for iPhone.
READ ALSO: Best apps to relax, meditate and feel good
