Sleep plays a vital role in good health and well-being throughout your life. Getting enough quality sleep at the right times can help protect your mental health, physical health, quality of life, and safety. The way you feel while you’re awake depends in part on what happens while you’re sleeping. During sleep, your body is working to support healthy brain function and maintain your physical health.
So what happens when you travel to different time zones? Your body goes crazy. Your biological clock that is in charge of controlling the physiological activities such as metabolic changes or sleep cycles suffers an imbalance known as jet lag. Once in the new time zone our circadian rhythms are slow to adjust and remain on their original biological schedule for several days. This results in our bodies telling us it is time to sleep, when it’s actually the middle of the afternoon, or it makes us want to stay awake when it is late at night. What can we do to fight the jet lag? Do you know any wearables to fight this? We do!
Neuroon, the intelligent sleep mask that will help you against the jet lag and help you to wake up ready to start the day full of energy. The mask looks like a regular mask that we can find out there to protect us from the light while sleeping. The Neuroon is a wireless device that connects to a mobile app to monitor your brain waves, analyze your sleep patterns, and use bright light therapy to help improve sleep quality. The Neuroon sleep mask is built around the premise that bright light therapy can help people who have difficulty falling asleep or waking up during normal hours. The light is in the mask itself, with different combinations of light coming from the white and colored LEDs inside. The light therapy programs are determined based on data collected through electrodes that touch the skin on the user’s forehead to measure the user’s pulse and body movement, brain waves, body temperature and eye movement. Depending on the user’s need and situation, the light therapy can be implemented before going to bed to ensure quality sleep, before waking up to provide a less abrupt waking experience, or during the day to either enhance energy or relieve the effects of jet lag. When the sleep mask is connected to the app, it generates a sleep analysis, for things like how long it took the user to fall asleep, sleep duration and sleep patterns. Neuroon was a speaker and exhibitor at the WT | Wearable Technologies Conference in Barcelona on Feb. 24, 2016 so had the chance to see it and test it live!
Luminette is here to give you the energy of the sun to fight the winter blues, or for people living in places where there is no sunlight for several months! The Luminette is a wearable light therapy device providing relief from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), sleep disorders, and circadian rhythm issues (jet lag and shift work). Unlike traditional light therapy devices, which require users to remain stationary in front of a lightbox, Luminette is worn like a pair of glasses that sit just above the eyes. It can be worn around the house or at work. Twenty minutes per day is enough to treat and prevent issues during months when sunlight is reduced. There’s also an app that generates biological clock rephrasing programmes. Luminette’s blue-enriched white light is output from LEDs. It hits the diffraction lens and stimulates the retina, without affecting vision. Light shines downwards into the eyes, just as sunlight naturally does. Receptors in the eye then send a signal to the body’s circadian clock regulator, stopping the secretion of melatonin, which naturally “wakes up” all body systems. You can buy now Luminette online or test it for a month at an affordable price. You might have seen Luminette (Lucimed) at our booth at MEDICA in 2014 as an exhibitor or at the WT | Wearable Technologies Conference Munich 2016.
Kokoon headphones are another approach when it comes to sleep. As finalists and winners of the WT | Innovation World Cup for the category Gaming&Lifestyle the EEG headphones monitor brainwaves to track your sleep. Equipped with electroencephalography (EEG) sensors and an emphasis on comfort, designed to keep you snoozing until the early hours and then wake you up with feedback on just how well you slept. The team has developed custom EEG sensors that sit inside the headphones. These monitor the tiny voltages in the brain of the wearer as they drift off to sleep and relay data to a companion smartphone app. Using special algorithms, the system is then able to detect when the user is asleep, lowering the volume and canceling out external noises so as not to wake them up again. Over time, the system learns what techniques are most effective and tailors its approach the next time you lay down to rest. The app offers users a sleep score, and sorts their different states of sleep into categories, such as deep, REM, light or awake.
Rythm with its Dreem headband will help people sleep better and wake up more easily through sound stimulation. The Dreem headband recognizes your sleep stage by measuring brain waves, and then plays sounds that match it. It also helps you transition to the next stage of sleep. The product’s alarm wakes you at the optimal sleep stage closest to the time you set, so your REM stage isn’t interrupted. In addition, Dreem analyzes your brain activity to measure sleep duration, time and movement.
Sleep Shepherd is another headband that uses brain-training sounds to help people get an extremely deep night’s sleep. The Sleep Shepherd Blue plays sounds called binaural beats. That are said to lull the brain into a meditative state and lower it slowly, into deep sleep. The Sleep Shepherd headband measures your brain waves as well. If it senses them speeding up toward wakefulness, it will play beats designed to guide you back to sleep for the night. The headband connects to an app that tracks your hours of sleep each night and shows you how long you spent in each stage.
Re-Timer Light Therapy Glasses are a light device, that produce a 100% UV-free green light, which helps your body recognize when to be awake and when to sleep. This type of light has been proven to naturally help you sleep by re-setting your sleep rhythm or body clock. Re-Timer may help if you have trouble sleeping at night, feel lethargic and sleep deprived in the morning, or are sleeping and waking at the wrong times. As it becomes dark in the evening, your body produces melatonin (often called the sleep hormone) telling your body it is time to sleep. The Re-Timer light suppresses the body’s production of melatonin, enabling you to change when you feel tired and therefore change when you sleep. Wearing Re-Timer in the morning helps you to sleep and wake earlier, and wearing Re-Timer in the evening helps you to sleep and wake later. The Re-Timer is worn like a pair of glasses for just thirty minutes at a time, building on proven research results that green-light wavelengths that can shift sleep rhythms.
Many wearable devices aimed to help us catch more Zzzzzzzs, most of them to wear while sleeping or at home. Now there are no more excuses for not being productive at work after a long trip. No more nights counting sheeps!
