Recent studies have shown us what great importance a healthy diet and dynamic lifestyle hold in our lives. Whether it’s calorie intake, quality and class of foods we consume, the physical activities we choose to perform or how much exercise we get to do during our busy work days all adds up in the way we live our lives and manage to keep up in an all-busy, stressful and ever moving world.And best of all, it’s all measurable.
But very few have worried themselves regarding our sleeping schedules and how well we get to sleep in order to stay in tandem with our responsibilities, despite insomnia and unhealthy sleeping patterns being a considerable cause of day to day distress and disruption in our schedules. Until now.
Image Source: Sleep my Splus
Resmed, a leading supplier of sleep and respiratory medicine, has recently announced a very innovative device that is meant to help you get better sleep without involving any contact, wristband or mattress pad. It goes by the name of S+ by ResMed and uses a system of bio-motion sensors meant to measure your sleep activity such as breathing and heart rate. The device provides you with personalized feedback to help you keep things in check and immediately start improving your sleep.
Overview of S+ by Resmed
The S+ is an innovative device – the fact that it can wirelessly track all of you sleeping habits and measure all necessary parameters to help you know what exactly is going on during the night and your sleep is only the beginning. That’s something that can easily be done with so many other already existent contraptions. But on top of that, it doesn’t hold back on actually telling you how to improve your sleep – unlike wristbands and mattresses.
The S+ is a very simplistic construction, taking the shape of a small box that you can keep right on your nightstand, without it standing out or bothering you too much through size. It, however, can only function when connected to power – no battery based model has been released yet nor do we know whether such a model is in the plans. The way you will be utilizing it is remotely, through your Android or iOS device via the predesignated, free application.
Once the Sleep Mode option is enabled from the app, you can relax and go to bed as the S+ by ResMed will begin recording all the information it can gather regarding your sleeping parameters. Following the results, the application will give you an ample overview of what your sleep score is, a detailed analysis of what happens during your sleep and a series of helpful interactive tools that will actually assist you in making your bed time more effective.
Key Features:
- Relax to sleep: relaxing, soothing sounds that will synchronize with the breathing patterns the device picks up from you to help induce sleep;
- Sleep score: a combination of sleep measurements and parameters that you can compare to scientifically researched averages, depending on age, gender and other variables, earing you a grade from 0 to 100. In addition, the app also provides “mind” and “body re-charge” scores;
- S+ mentor: once the information on your sleeping behavior is recorded, the S+ mentor will start providing you personalized feedback to help you figure out how to improve your sleep performance;
- Sleep charts: a detailed graphic representation of your sleep stages during the night – light, deep and rapid eye movement stage – and a breakdown of your sleeping sessions during the night, which you can also compare to other nights, thus allowing you to observe changes in your sleeping behavior over time;
- Mind clear: a small feature that gives you the freedom of either recording a voice clip or typing a text note to help you clear your thoughts and help you get a good night’s sleep;
- Smart alarm: a particular trait of the S+ by ResMed that will allow you to let the many years of research invested in this device and the sleeping behavior of humans do the job and allow it to wake you up at the most effective time or moment of your sleep.
Image Source: Medgadget
All the variables that can show up in a sleep analysis, the patented sensors of the S+ by ResMed takins in information regarding light, noise, temperature levels, while maintaining the option for you to input certain information manually, such as caffeine and alcohol intake, physical exercise performed, levels of stress, and much more. All these details are then used by various algorithms meant to determine the optimal sleeping schedule for you.
How S+ by ResMed Really Works
Setup of the S+ by ResMed is relatively simple. Although it does not function on just battery and you will have to plug your device into a power socket to have it up and running, it’s far from an inconvenience. As soon as it’s powered up, you just place it on your nightstand, enable its sleep mode function on its sensor and it’s good to go – all that’s left for you to do is to lay your head down on the pillow and go to sleep. As the S+ is controlled through your Android or iOS device, you won’t need to operate the actual device at all: all commands are given straight through your phone or tablet, which will remain in sync with the S+ and provide you with the results in the morning on the same medium.
For some of us, the last step of making use of the S+ is the hardest – actually falling asleep. Whether it’s inability of relaxing, nagging thoughts and responsibilities knocking on as we are trying to get some sleep, S+ does have a solution to help make things better – either make use of its relaxation feature or give up worries by leaving yourself memos and notes for the second day to worry about through the mind clear feature.
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The second day, the application will await for you with a sleep score that gets recorded throughout your sleep based on what the sensor is able to pick up from you. The app begins by greeting you with a general score from 1 to 100, rating the general quality of your sleep – measuring the amount of sleep you got, the length of light, deep and REM stages of sleep and number of times you woke up or became agitated during your sleep.
Percentages of how recharged your mind is or how rested your body became during nighttime will also display in your way to the more detailed analysis. Then, you can start analyzing your sleep in depth by making use of the application’s features which get saved over time, allowing you to observe your progress in a specific frame of time – whether we’re talking days, weeks and even months.
Following the analysis, the corresponding mobile application of the S+ by ResMed will provide you with optimal ways to improve your sleep and even push notifications for you throughout your day to make sure you are taking the necessary steps to get a good night’s sleep. Whether the solution might prove to be something as basic as changing the time you go to bed or taking a hot bath to help you relax into falling asleep if that is where your sleeping issues begin, the S+ takes a long time to run out of ideas to help.
Price & Warranty
The device can be picked up from various retail sources – both retail and online – for a price of $150. The developing company, ResMed, also makes a decent offer for potential customers, offering a 30-day satisfaction guarantee policy, a time frame that will allow you to return your product and get a refund if the device does not get up to your expectations. So if you feel that the money you paid for the S+ is not keeping up with your needs, ResMed will bail you out of the expense.
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Advantages and Disadvantages
The device unfortunately comes with some disadvantages as well, proving that there’s still room for improvement in this innovative technology. Customers have recorded the range of the sensors as being not that wide, not being able to reach them when they did something as basic as moving further from the S+ in bed by rolling on the other side. The sensors would still pick up the signal, but with the occasional interruption or inaccurate reading of your breathing and heart rate.
Naturally, this creates discrepancy between the device’s advice in order to help you get better sleep and your actual needs, ultimately defeating the purpose. Some customers also reported that the device would end up picking up signals from other people in its vicinity when their targets would get up in the middle of the night for bathroom breaks or whatever reason – considering the S+ cannot record and pick up on more than one person at a time, this was another situation in which the readings would turn out erroneous and not do much of a good job in keeping you well informed about your sleeping patterns.
Image Source: Cnet
Sadly, the way that the S+ is built to work does not allow you to use two devices at the same time in the same room, as the interferences would most likely mess up both results the second day. Other than that, however, most users proved to be content with the device and application and even claimed that their sleep has improved by following the personalized advice the S+ provided.
Considering of what dire importance our sleep really holds in our general day to day wellbeing, the S+ by ResMed really does something that most other devices invented for this reason fail to achieve. And it’s easy to use, does not provide any discomfort whatsoever and can become your most trusty and useful tool into tackling a healthy lifestyle – no matter how busy – easily.