I'm Dr. Joshua Schwimmer, a nephrologist in New York City. • Kidney Notes was the first active nephrology blog, and The National Library of Medicine still uses Kidney Notes as an example of how to formally cite blogs in the medical literature. • Professionally, you can find me at Kidney.nyc. • Kidney Notes is for educational purposes only, not medical advice. Consult qualified health care professionals. See disclaimer.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Final Sleeptracker Review: No Magic Bullet




Disclaimer: Sleep isn't my specialty. My experience may not be yours.

I've evaluated Sleeptracker for one week, and I can't detect any significant difference in my sleep or wakening. To recap: Sleeptracker is a watch which is designed to detect REM or stage 1 sleep and wake you up at the "optimal" time.

This sounds good in theory, but in order for this to be effective the following must be true:

  1. REM or stage 1 sleep must be sensed,
  2. the stages of sleep must be sensed accurately,
  3. there must be a noticeable benefit to wakening in the lighter stages of sleep.

The problem is this: the Sleeptracker website doesn't say how it works. This is understandable, but it means there is no way to verify that #1 or #2 is true. Number 3 intuitively seems true, but no evidence is cited to back this up.

Personally, I have not noticed that I wake easily or feel unusually refreshed when using Sleeptracker. There could be many reasons for this (and again, my experience may not be yours), but for a product this expensive, I would hope for a more obvious benefit.