Friday 17th March is World Sleep Day. This annual event described by the World Sleep Society is intended to be a celebration of sleep and a call to action on important issues related to sleep, including medicine, education, social aspects and driving.
Did you get 7 hours’ sleep last night? It would be great if you did – you would be 10-30% less likely to die at any age, and 20-40% less likely to get diseases like Alzheimer’s. Not to mention how it improves how you think and feel.
There are at least 16 sleep-health practices that might help you as shown in the chart below. However, we all differ greatly in which would make a difference – e.g. one person’s sensitivity to evening light can be 58x that of another person. People who want to improve their sleep try the suggestions out and hope for the best.
Tory Frame, ART-AI cohort 2 student supported by the Bath Alumni Fund, is on a mission to change this, by replacing guesswork with personalised plans and intervention support. Tory objectively measures participants’ biological variables and sleep environment. Participants use an EEG headband and light, activity and environment monitors for 2 months; Tory uses transparent AI to assess and explain what drives their sleep, including things that happen when they are asleep.
Tory’s first group of 5 participants now understand what is affecting their sleep. Lots of different sleep-health practices in the previous chart came up as opportunities for improvement as shown in the chart below: 13 of the 16 practices were a top 4 priority for at least 1 participant. Turning down the temperature was important for 3 of them – they were more likely to wake up, or move from deep to light sleep, when room temperature was high, taking into account other factors like sleep pressure. Some thought they were doing a great job on some practices, until they saw the data comparing them to best practice and illustrating their individual sensitivity.
Participants have now set goals for what they want to improve and are now making changes. Smart devices and AI are monitoring these changes over 1 month, learning which changes are easiest for someone to make and impact on their sleep. Participants get a personalised tracker each day, so they can keep track of how they are doing against their specific goals. See the chart below for the practices chosen by participants to improve, and how they are doing at making changes. Caffeine has seen the most successful change so far; getting enough natural light during the day has been the most challenging. Ten more participants are doing the same test in Spring and another 10 in Autumn, so it will be interesting to see if seasons make a difference.
If you would like to get involved and are aged 40-55, please see https://bathreg.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/sleep-angel-consent-form for more information – Tory has 1 slot in Spring 2023 and 5 in Autumn 2023.
Main Photo by Gregory Pappas on Unsplash
