We've all experienced the trauma of being rudely awoken by an intrusive alarm clock going off while in deep sleep. Apart from the shock to the system, you wake up feeling not fully rested because you've been wrested from your slumber at the wrong time in your sleep cycle. By the same token, if you wake up naturally (even if you've had a shorter nights sleep) you feel instantly awake and fully refreshed. This is because you've naturally reached the end of a sleep cycle, you are in light sleep and ready to awake.Why not an alarm system which monitors your sleep cycle. You set two times (earliest and latest), and the alarm gently nudges you awake at the point between those times when you are in lightest sleep. I am convinced this will be a boon to health, happiness and vitality!
I agree
No opinion
I disagree![[SPAM]](http://www.whynot.net/images/flagasspam.png)
Flag as spam
Add your comment
Problem with this is that your earliest and latest time must be set for at least one hour (or much longer) apart in order to coincide with a sleep cycle. I don't think I would like to be awake one hour earlier than I need to. The chances is that I will fall back into sleep again.
Fair point Tintin! Especially about falling back to sleep again! My theory, though, is that because you have awoken at an optimum point in your sleep cycle, you will be wide awake and ready to bounce right out of bed!! You can use the extra hour to do some daily exercises or whatever!?
I would be willing to try it :-)
As a snooze alarm addict - I like the dreams of REM sleep -perhaps this needs a human plug-in element.Plant an inter-human electrode/chip/whatever under the skin (which of course has the ability to update your medical history, credit card/EZ pass ... never mind all that)and it can be programmed via an extra-human device to gradually wake you up without destroying sleep cycles yet as appropriate to life's needs.
I don't know of a present technology that can carefully monitor and then accurately decide what part of the sleep cycle I am in, without wires taped to my skull? Maybe we don't have to.
Perhaps it would be beneficial to very slowly and NATURALLY draw your senses out of the sleep cycle regardless of where you are in the cycle. Even if you are in REM or deep sleep, you can program room lights to ramp on very slowly, over a sixty minute period. Add an audio program of ocean waves, or forest sounds or whatever floats your boat, to also ramp up slowly in volume. The hardcore user can add smell too, a bedside cup of coffee brewing might be your favorite early aroma.
Use inexpensive Radio Shack or X-10.com modules and easily program the scene. See 'home automation' under Google for more info. The real trick is to reset your internal clock by going to bed at aproximately the same time every night. I don't have the discipline, so X-10 shuts off lights for me! Just like in prison movies?
I came up with a similar idea myself, although I acknowledge you had it first.
You may be interested to know this idea is now commercialised. I have seen three such products Sleeptracker, aXbo and Zeo, and an iPhone app that does the same thing, the Sleep Cycle alarm clock.
I think the smartphone apps are the way forward in this area, as they will likely be a lower cost. I suspect it is possible to have a bluetooth heartrate monitor, wrist motion sensor or headband brainwave meter that transmits the data to the smartphone.
Sleeping with your phone in you bed sounds to me like a good way to be late for work while you pitch through your pillows and blankets looking for it. You finally give up and call it with your wife's phone, wake her up and get griped at.
I think instead, they should put a big button on the top of your alarm clock that would allow you to snooze nine minutes, to ease you back to stage one sleep, no matter where you were when the alarm first went off. Oh yeah, they've done that for thirty years.