Have you ever woken up feeling terrible even though you’re healthy and got “enough” hours of sleep?

A lot of people experience this problem. The issue could lie with the timing of your alarm clock.

Sleep Cycle: The internal clock

During your natural sleep cycle, your body goes into different phases: the light sleep phase, deep sleep phase, and REM sleep phase (during which dreams occur).

If you are woken up during the deep sleep phase, you are likely to feel groggy and fatigued, while waking up during the lightest sleep phase can kick start a beautiful morning.

Your regular alarm clock, however, can’t sense what sleep cycle you are in and thus wakes you up regardless of your feelings.

Luckily, the Sleep Cycle app is a bio-alarm clock that can tune in to your unique sleep cycle.

Sleep Cycle: How the App Works

The type of body movement during sleep depends on the sleep phase you are in. Sleep Cycle uses the  accelerometer in your phone to detect your nightly motions and determine your sleep phase. The app also generates a visual representation of your sleep phases.

The Sleep Cycle alarm clock has a thirty minute window that ends at the set alarm time. During this window, the app can wake you up during your lightest sleep phase.

Sleep Cycle also registers the time you spend in bed, providing the total hours slept as well as the start and stop time. The combination of night-time movement patterns and the hours slept are then used to calculate your sleep quality. In general, as the app’s website explains, “The more you sleep and the less you move, the higher the Sleep Quality.”

Upon waking, you can register notes such as your waking condition and anything that could have affected your sleep like “coffee,” making it easier to identify and get rid of habits that harm your sleep.

Lastly, If you sleep next to a partner, the app will still work. Make sure to charge your phone while running the app because it uses a lot of battery life.

Get ready for a good night’s rest!

– Steffi