Wellness Metrics
AutoSleep's sleep bank uses an advanced algorithm over your last 7 night's sleep to determine if you are in sleep credit or sleep debt.
Sleep debt is the difference between the amount of sleep that you should be getting and the amount that you actually get. It starts to quietly build if you regularly miss a few extra minutes of sleep for a few nights in a row and can go easily unnoticed.
Symptoms of sleep debt include a foggy brain, impaired driving, trouble remembering and lower levels of both mental and physical performance. In the longer term, chronic deprivation leads to health problems such as obesity, insulin resistance and heart disease.
If you aim to stay in the "green" (credit) you will generally feel healthier and more alert during the day.
To help with this, the AutoSleep Siri Dashboard has a "latest bedtime" clock. This considers your current sleep bank balance, your sleep efficiency and your most likely wake time for the next morning and lets you know the latest time you should be in bed. It also lets you set one or more reminders prior to this time.
The sleep bank helps you to monitor your sleep debt. Paying back the debt can be done via a few night's of recovery sleep. When the sleep debt is erased, your body will usually arrive at a consistent sleep pattern that works for you. You can then stay on top of this with the sleep bank and sleep hygiene trends.
Banking SleepThough certainly not best sleep hygiene practice, sometimes life isn't as consistent as the textbooks dictate. A number of interesting studies have been undertaken on banking sleep prior to planned sleep deprivation.
AutoSleep's readiness rating considers waking heart rate variability and waking pulse to give insights into your mental & physical state.
About Waking PulseThis is your heart rate in beats per minute upon waking. It's the gold standard way of capturing your resting heart rate as it is done under controlled and consistent conditions. This lets you easily identify trends. The good news is that if you wear your Watch to bed, AutoSleep does this for you automatically.
Generally speaking, if your heart rate is higher than your established baseline average then you are likely to be more stressed. If lower, then less stressed. Stress may come in many forms, it may be due to illness, decreased fitness, lack of recovery, mental stress, overtraining or many other factors.
About Heart Rate Variability (HRV)It's a common misconception that a healthy heart always beats like a metronome, every beat in perfect time. In reality, this is what happens when we are more physically or mentally stressed. When we are not physically or mentally stressed, the heart tends to have a more significant beat to beat variation. From a rhythm perspective, it's a bit more like Elaine's famous dance rather than the The Temptations.
How to Record Waking HRVThere's a surprisingly easy and pleasant way to capture HRV. Upon waking, do a 1 minute session using the Breathe app on your Apple Watch. The best way is to set this up as a complication on your sleeping watch face.
When capturing HRV consistency is everything. Especially when using the SDNN method that the Apple Watch uses as this tends to reflect both physical and mental stress.
When you wake, don't sit up, don't do any vigorous movement, just start the Breathe app session whilst lying down, close your eyes and relax. Don't move. Not only does this ensure maximal consistency of measurement, but it's also a nice way to start the day.
What's a Good HRV measurement?HRV is reported in milliseconds. There is no point in comparing your reading with someone else. There's also no point in comparing the readings to those taken at other times during the day. It means next to nothing. The value comes over time. AutoSleep will start to determine your baseline HRV measurement. The value comes from comparing your day to day changes (acute) against your baseline (chronic). Generally speaking, if your HRV reading is above your baseline it means you are less stressed. If below the baseline it means you are likely more stressed.
Ideally, you should capture HRV every morning. At a minimum 5 morning's a week will give acceptable results.
BaselineReadiness works by comparing your daily (acute) readings against your averaged baseline. Accuracy will be acceptable after 7 days of data capture and will improve up to 28 days. Readiness RatingAutoSleep combines these two amazing health metrics and simplifies them to a simple star rating and an easy to read gauge in the Watch app and the Today tab.
What's the Point?The rating will give you a strong indicator of the day's physical and mental performance potential as well as giving insight into whether you have been pushing things too hard. For example, if you want to use readiness to gauge how hard you should train, go harder when green, go berserk when blue, business as usual when yellow, a little lighter when orange, consider a rest day when red.  As an anecdote, our intrepid AutoSleep developer has increased his bench press by 20kg by only doing heavier weight sessions when in the green zone of the gauge. It's just one example of how you can use this to improve your own performance.
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