How To Strengthen Your Sleep Score In The New Year, From The Pros

Sleep is about so much more than feeling well rested. Sleep impacts basically every single function of your body—not just your energy levels but also your heart health, mental health1, cardiovascular and metabolic health2, skin health… I could go on and on! Sleep is one of the most crucial factors in your overall strength and longevity—full stop. 

Yet 30 to 44%3 of U.S. adults don't get enough shut-eye, and a much larger chunk doesn't get enough quality sleep. Because it's not just about the hours spent in bed—it's about how restorative those hours actually are for your body. 

"When it comes to sleep, people are not aware that quality is more important than quantity," says physician and sleep specialist Angela Holliday-Bell, M.D., founder of The Solution Is Sleep.

While you can usually estimate the quality of your sleep by how you feel when you wake up in the morning, wearable sleep trackers can provide more granular measurements. These gadgets give an overview of your sleep quality and sleep patterns, which can help you identify any issues or ways to optimize your schedule. 

"The most common metrics provided by sleep trackers are total sleep time, time spent in various sleep stages, and overall activity tracking," notes behavioral sleep doctor Shelby Harris, PsyD, DBSM, director of sleep health at Sleepopolis.

Trackers typically break down your night into light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep, and latency (aka, how long it takes you to fall asleep) stages. However, "these trackers are less accurate when estimating time spent in each sleep stage—though they are improving," says Harris. 

Trackers can also measure your heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), respiratory rate, and body temperature to further shed light on your sleep architecture. See, your heart rate naturally decreases while you're sleeping. "So when that goes down during the night can be a clue to your sleep quality," notes Holliday-Bell. 

Combined, these metrics form your nightly sleep score. Holliday-Bell considers anything above 80 a "good" score, though many sleep optimizers among us aim for the high 90s each night. 

Using a sleep tracker can be immensely helpful when it comes to picking up trends you might not have been aware of. For example, you may think you go to bed around the same time each night, but a wearable can clue you in to the exact hour you finally wind down. If you feel groggy one morning, maybe your wearable shows you woke up three times in the middle of the night. 

Essentially, the data is great for gleaning insights on how to improve your nightly snooze. And, look, knowledge is power! But there's a fine line between helpful data and information overload. 

"Sometimes people get a bit deeper in the weeds of their sleep patterns than they need to," Holliday-Bell notes. Let's say your wearable says you didn't spend much time in REM one night—will you let that information impact the rest of your day? If so, you might not be the best candidate for sleep trackers in the first place. 

"If you find yourself really worrying about the numbers themselves, and when you look at the data from your wearable you become more stressed because of it, those may be signs that it's probably not the right thing for you to utilize," she adds.