How To Rest Easier With Fitbit’s Sleep Tools

Did you know that getting the right amount of shut-eye can help you curb food cravings, fight aging and depression, ward off sickness, reduce your risk of heart disease, and even lower your risk of cancer and type 2 diabetes? Just like exercise and good food, sleep is critical to your health.

With National Sleep Awareness Week occurring on March 8-14, it’s the perfect time to work on getting more restful sleep. Use Fitbit’s tools to understand your sleep quality, form better habits, and get personalized guidance to help you sleep better, have more energy, and improve your overall health and wellbeing. 

Unlocking the mystery of sleep starts with tracking it. Set sleep goals, as well as creating a sleep schedule complete with bedtimes and wake-up target times, then wear your Fitbit device to record how long you sleep. View graphs of your sleep in the app to analyze your unique trends and discover potential changes you can make to help you get more Zzz’s. 

Make the most of Fitbit’s Sleep Score feature:

There’s more to a good night’s sleep than just getting in 8 hours. Sleep Score combines multiple factors, looking at your sleeping heart rate data, time asleep, and restlessness throughout the night, every night that you wear your Fitbit device to bed. This gives you a quick, easy way to see how well you’re sleeping, watch your trends over time and keep yourself accountable to your goals.

• Every morning in the Fitbit app, you get a Sleep Score based on the previous night’s rest. 
• Sleep Score is Fitbit’s most advanced sleep analysis and gives you an easy way to see how well you slept, based on three categories: sleep duration, sleep depth, and sleep restoration.
  • Sleep Duration: Tracks how much time you’re actually asleep between your bedtime and wake-up time, not just the amount of time you spend in bed (it’s normal to wake briefly throughout the night). 
  • Sleep Depth: Measures how much time you spend in deep and REM sleep, a key contributor to quality rest.
  • Sleep Restoration: Analyzes your resting heart rate and movement during sleep to measure how refreshed you should feel in the morning.

• If you have a Fitbit device with a heart rate monitor, then you’ll get your top-line Sleep Score. 
• And for those who want a more in-depth analysis, Fitbit Premium gives you a detailed breakdown of how your Sleep Score was calculated and the areas where your sleep needs to improve, so you can start making changes. Join Premium now.

Whether or not your Fitbit device tracks your heart rate, you can use many of Fitbit’s sleep tools.

• Set a nightly sleep goal in the Fitbit app. Most adults need 7-9 hours per night, so the default goal is 8 hours. 
• View your sleep graphs in the app to see how you’ve slept over the last day, week, month, or year.
• Compare your sleep trends to your activity, what you eat, and more to find potential patterns, then see if making small changes will help you get more Zzz’s.
• Set your watch to sleep mode so that your rest isn’t disturbed by your watch’s display or notifications. (For smartwatches only.)

Sleep Schedule. Research shows that going to bed and waking up around the same time every day improves the length and quality of your sleep. Using Fitbit’s sleep schedule is an easy way to improve your rest and feel refreshed. 

You can set bedtime and wake-up targets, then get reminders in order to stick to them. Many people use alarms to wake up at a consistent time, but fail to go to bed at a consistent time. With bedtime reminders, you can get a friendly notification on your phone—and tracker or watch—that nudge you when it’s time to turn in for the night. See how well you’re following your sleep schedule in the Fitbit app, then aim to stay within 40 minutes of your target times.

Smart Wake. Not a morning person? Make your morning routine that much more seamless with Smart Wake. You can set your Fitbit alarm to wake you with a quiet vibration during a lighter sleep stage to help you feel more refreshed. Here’s how: 

• Set a silent alarm using the Fitbit app (or set one up directly on your smartwatch) and check the “Smart Wake” box.
• Your Fitbit tracker or watch will wake you in a lighter sleep stage, up to 30 minutes prior to your desired wake-up time.
• Using 24/7 heart rate and sensitive motion detectors, your Fitbit tracker or watch estimates which stage of sleep you’re in.
• Smart Wake may help you wake up more refreshed, but it shouldn’t replace a good night’s sleep (experts recommend adults sleep 7-9 hours a night).
• Smart Wake is available on all Fitbit devices with heart rate tracking.

Unlock more advanced sleep features with Fitbit Premium: 

Fitbit pioneered wearable sleep tracking over ten years ago and continues to invest in innovative sleep features to help users rest easier with intelligent, free, and paid tools that help you on the journey to unlocking optimal rest. Keep reading to find out more, below. 

Sleep Score breakdown. With Premium, you can get a deeper analysis of your free daily Sleep Score—with a breakdown showing how it was calculated based on your time asleep, and deep and versus REM sleep stages, and how restorative your sleep was. 

Why does this matter? Your Sleep Score breakdown helps you understand which aspects of your sleep need to improve: Should you focus more on sleep length or sleep quality? Experiment with small changes to try to improve your rest. Or, maybe you’re not getting enough deep sleep? Power down your devices an hour before bed to reduce blue light exposure. Waking for long periods in the night? You can try unwinding with a book or relaxing music before you hit the sheets. 

Guided Sleep Programs: Through Premium’s step-by-step sleep programs, you’ll discover changes you can make to work toward a better night’s rest. Plus, get helpful tools like a personal bedtime routine checklist, soothing audio tracks for unwinding, and more. Each program lasts a few weeks and you can repeat them anytime your sleep habits need a tune up.

Personalized Sleep Insights: There are so many different factors that go into a good night’s sleep. Fitbit Premium analyzes all your sleep stats for you and turns them into useful, custom-built guidance, served up front and center in the Fitbit app. Discover how your sleep is connected to a wide range of factors—like your activity, sleep schedule, bedtime routine, resting heart rate, and more—and learn specific things you can do to get better rest and have more energy.

And guess what? That’s just the beginning of what you can uncover when you know your sleep better. 

Join Premium now.

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source https://blog.fitbit.com/fitbit-sleep-tools/