5 Sleep Apps that Help Improve Your Health Overnight

Americans are having a harder time falling asleep. 61% of adults under 30 years of age report challenges in falling asleep. 68% of that same young population report that these sleep challenges can have a major effect on their daily mood.

Each night, an estimated 84% of Americans experience sleep difficulties. Issues might include sleep disorders, frequent wake episodes, or disruptions in sleep-wake cycles that leave us without the energy we need to thrive the next day.

Clinicians might recommend different strategies to combat sleep issues — suggestions that largely depend on the challenges you’re facing. For example, a doctor might prescribe melatonin or suggest a sleep study for someone struggling with a sleep disorder. They might only recommend a stricter bedtime routine if blue light is keeping you up at night.

Doctors and sleepers alike are also finding value in a relatively new form of sleep assistance: sleep apps. Mobile apps can track metrics like sleep duration, efficiency, and latency to help you better understand the reasons you’re sleeping, or not sleeping, each night.

What is a Sleep Tracking App?

A sleep tracking app is an application, typically on a mobile phone, that helps you track features of your sleep. Depending on the application and the sleep metrics you want to track, a sleep tracking app can record information about your sleep movements, noises, circadian rhythm, and approximate sleep and wake times.

You can use a sleep tracking app to accomplish many different goals. Many people simply want to learn more about their sleep and the factors that influence it. Others use a sleep tracking app in conjunction with a full sleep hygiene routine.

Sleep tracking apps also create accountability around sleep habits. They help you understand, and own, your nightly sleep experience. Insight into your sleep metrics is the first step in making changes that further improve your quality of rest. Clinicians use much of the same information, gathered and stored by your phone’s sleep app, when providing any sort of a consultation or diagnosis. They might also consult your sleep app’s collected data when developing a sleep-related treatment plan.

Considering a Sleep App? Start with these 5 Recommendations.

Not all sleep apps are created equal. The best sleep applications track all the sleep-related metrics you’re looking for. They help you understand your sleep strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for immediate improvement. They can also help you track your sleep patterns and avoid oversleeping and overly-lengthy naps.

Here are five sleep apps we recommend to people who want to better regulate nightly sleep:

Calm App

Calm is a holistic health and wellness application that has several features for better sleep. It first prompts you to enter your health goals — options include Self-Improvement, Reduce Stress, and Improve Sleep Quality— before tailoring program features accordingly.

The Calm App features a free, daily meditation, with additional audio available for a monthly fee. It contains entire libraries of soothing meditations, nature sounds, music, and soundscapes that help millions of monthly listeners drift off to comfortable sleep. You can use the same audio libraries to focus at work or during exercise. Calm even features audio specifically for young listeners who might have trouble sleeping.

Sleep Cycle

Unlike the Calm App, Sleep Cycle is an app specifically designed only for sleep optimization. It helps you track valuable sleep metrics, analyzing your sleep patterns to help you learn from your body’s habits. It also wakes you up each morning at an ideal time between sleep and wake cycles.

Sleep Cycle has a variety of other features that further improve the quality of your sleep. You can use it to generate white noise, which provides background audio that helps you drift off. It also tracks nightly snoring episodes and builds tailored sleep programs that identify a roadmap for effective sleep management.

Sleep Reset

Sleep Reset is a science-based sleep program that helps people improve sleep patterns in as little as two weeks. Alongside thousands of other weekly users, you’ll use Sleep Reset as an advocate for all things sleep consulting. Sleep Reset also features a coaching network of certified professionals who can help you understand your boy’s sleep performance and potential paths to improvement.

Pricing for Sleep Reset starts at $297, after a seven-day free trial. Unlike other sleep programs, Sleep Reset isn’t simply a standalone phone application; it’s an entire sleepe regimen that gives you more authority over your own sleep cycles. After taking your sleep assessment, the programs will help diagnose any challenges and put you on a fast path to improvement.

Sleep Easy

Sleep Easy is a mobile application specifically designed as a form of insomnia therapy. It is designed to effectively treat over 30 common sleep problems, from jet lag to restless legs. It helps reduce anxiety and relieve stress that might compromise your bedtime routine.

The Sleep Easy app was created by sleep expert Dr. Richard Shane as a program designed to trigger your neurological “sleep switches”. First, the app prompts you to identify the unique sleep challenges you face. These might include snoring, sleep apnea, the inability to quiet your mind, non-traditional work hours, travel through different time zones, even medication that affects sleep quality or longevity.

The app then provides a curated set of programs designed to guide you toward healthier sleep. Your selection of programs are based on the sleep challenges you identify.

Slumber

Slumber claims to be “the app that puts you to sleep” — and for many, it doesn’t disappoint. The app combines several forms of meditation to put you into an anxiety-free mindset. Browse through libraries of stories, historic anecdotes, and other forms of audio to find meditations best suited for your sleep style. You can also choose from a variety of music and soundscapes that allow you to fall asleep to the sound of waves, forests, even safe hypnotic therapy.

How Should I Integrate a Sleep App into My Overall Sleep Health Profile?

Using a sleep app is a great step toward improving your overall sleep health — but it’s only a step. Your sleep health represents your full pattern of sleep and wake cycles, along with all of the factors that contribute to those cycles.

For best results, integrate your sleep app habits into your overall sleep hygiene habits. Set a specific time to check your sleep app’s settings before you rest. Make sure you’re collecting the right data at the right intervals. If you’re running a sleep app on a smartphone or smart watch, make sure your device remains charged during evening hours.

Data can only help you improve if you use it. After your sleep app collects information about your sleep patterns and habits, it’s important to spend time reviewing that data. Many sleep apps adapt your data into personalized insights that make tailored recommendations on how you can improve your sleep habits.

In other cases, you might need to review your sleep data and infer changes yourself. Pay particular attention to your nightly habits that directly compromise the amount of sleep you get per night. For example, check data on your sleep-wake cycles to determine how much time you spend in deep sleep each night. This might help you solve fatigue problems, even if it feels like you’re getting a full night’s rest every evening.

It’s also important to integrate a sleep app alongside other sleep assets. This includes your pillows, sheets, blankets, and any other items you take to bed with you. It also includes one of the most important external factors to high-quality sleep:

Your mattress.

The right mattress can mean the difference between a full night of sleep and intermittent rest. It can help you receive all the energy you need — or it can leave you tired, irritable, and ill-equipped to face the day. A high-quality mattress is an important contributor to sleep health, helping you fall and stay asleep in ways that allow your body to heal, store memories, and perform other essential nighttime processes.

Finding the right mattress can be a challenge. Your height, weight, body type, and other factors mean that some mattresses might be a better fit than others. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed in the face of so many mattress options, each of which has a different size, shape, firmness, and price tag.

At Mattress Warehouse, we’re determined to take the mystery and the anxiety out of the sleep process. That’s why we’ve developed a patented sleep diagnostic program, bedMATCH, to pair people like you with the sleep you deserve. The bedMATCH process considers 18 different sleep characteristics to pair you with mattress options best qualified to deliver a great night’s rest.

Take the five-minute bedMATCH quiz for answers to an important question: which mattresses are best for my sleep needs? This information can help you — and our certified in-store sleep professionals — match you with mattress choices best suited for your body.