Sleep is a stubborn foe ...

But the Sleep Ap is cool!

I have an application for my iTouch (an iPhone without the phone) that cost me a whopping $0.99. It uses the accelerometer in the iTouch to determine if and when you move during the night. The thinking is - when you're in deep sleep - you don't move at all - you are basically paralyzed. When you're in REM sleep, you move a bit. When you're awake or in light sleep, you move a lot. I think this application is reasonably accurate - on the night this graph was taken, I was in and out of dreams all night. When I woke in the morning, I felt as though I hadn't slept much, but the Sleep Alarm application says otherwise. You don't know when you're in deep sleep, so all you remember are some dreams from REM, and all the times you were awake and moving around. Somehow, seeing these graphs is cathartic for me - I now believe I get more rest than I would normally think I had.

Now, on the other hand, the other night I had a truly lousy night's rest - that graph is here to the left. You can tell that there wasn't a whole lot of relaxation and snoring going on.





Finally, the graph below is with drugs (doxylamine succinate 12.5mg - the same active ingredient that's in Nyquil or Unisom) - not a lot better than the one at the very top. Gives me something to think about...