Insufficient or interrupted sleep plagues one out of three U.S. adults, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC). The problems don’t stop at just feeling tired. Lack of sleep is associated with diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and depression. Sleep-related motor vehicle crashes and mistakes at work cause a lot of injury and disability each year, the CDC reports. We have written about numerous wearables and apps that claim to help people sleep better with specific techniques, such as a vibrating pillow from Integrated Listening Systems and the Ōura Ring sleep and activity tracker.
Rythm‘s Dreem headband combines multiple technologies to improve sleep quality. A veritable kitchen pantry of sleep analysis and support features, the Dreem foam and fabric headband holds an array of physiological sensors for real-time signal analysis. The headband records brain activity via electroencephalography (EEG) sensors, heart rate with a pulse oximeter, and breathing frequency and movement via a 3-D accelerometer. Low-power Bluetooth and WiFi transmit to a mobile app for offline analysis to produce a nightly report from sensor data that includes sleep-onset duration, sleep duration, wake-up state, and a proprietary sleep score. But all that’s just for collecting data.
Dreem also employs three additional technologies intended to improve sleep. Sleep induction, one of the three Dreem feature supersets, uses cognition, ambiance, respiration, and meditation. Deep Sleep Stimulation employs audio stimulation via bone conduction to stimulate the slow brainwave oscillations of deep sleep. Dreem’s Smart Alarm feature tracks light sleep to wake users within a 20-minute window before a preset alarm time.
As the saying goes, “everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” Most sleep technology devices simply track sleep and then tell you what happened. Dreem’s virtual catalog of sleep support tech raises the possibility of actively taking steps to improve your sleep. Dreem’s technology is fully outlined and explained in a white paper available on the site.
