A columnist for The Washington Post tries a $5,000 Sleep Number 360 smart bed and investigates other sleep tech that’s flooding the market. Does any of it work?
Sleep Number embeds sensors throughout its mattresses, which start at $1,000. They measure each side of the bed for movement — a proxy for restful and restless sleep — as well as heart rate and respiration. The best part: Without futzing with apps, it activates every time it feels someone in the bed and saves data to the cloud.
For $150, there’s a new FDA-listed wireless tracker called Beddr SleepTuner that measures even more. Pop the postage-stamp-size sensor on your forehead (via a medical-grade sticker), and in addition to recording your head’s movement, it reads the oxygen in your blood and tries to identify when you stop breathing. That can help you understand why you might be waking up unrested — also an indicator you should see a doctor about sleep apnea.
And there’s a free app called SleepScore that tracks sleep stages using sonar. Place a phone running it by your bed, and it listens for waves bouncing off your body to identify when you’re in light, deep and REM sleep. One big downside: You have to leave your phone close to your bed.
This is the equivalent of pouring warm water on a serious cut to rinse away the blood from view while doing nothing to prevent bleeding out. You treat snoring by finding the cause and treating it … obstructive sleep apnea maybe. A band aid approach such as waking you up helps others, not the snorer. He or she still has serious health problems.