Sleeping cool is the next big thing in sleep fitness.
Thermal environment is one of the biggest factors that can influence the quality of sleep. Creating a cool environment to aid a drop in core body temperature is important in sustaining a deep healthy sleep. The most pronounced drop in body temperature happens when you enter REM sleep. It’s the stage of deep sleep during which you typically see dreams. Core body temperature plays a key role in circadian rhythms which are linked to sleep disorders caused by disruptions in the body temperature. Sleeping on surfaces with greater conductive body heat loss increases the amount of deep sleep.
The National Sleep Foundation recommends keeping bedroom temperature cool during sleep, between 60 F to 67 F to ensure overall restful sleep and quality REM sleep.
Eight Sleep, originally called “Eight” was in reference to those fabled eight hours of recommended perfect sleep. The vision for Eight Sleep was to compress your sleep and improve your life. A good six hours, as it turns out, is better than eight hours that are not.
Eight Sleep developed a proprietary technology called the Pod that enhances sleep performance, and is currently used by pro athletes and top performers across multiple industries to fall asleep faster and get more restful sleep. The end goal of the Pod is to compress sleep and scan your body while asleep to monitor your health.
Eight Sleep was named one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies” in 2018, recognized as one of TIME’s “Best Inventions” in 2018 and 2019 and has raised $70M in funding from leading investors.
Sleep is an overlooked pillar of health.
Research and science have long suggested that your overall health and wellness rests on three pillars: nutrition, exercise and sleep. The importance of nutrition and exercise have become so omnipresent in our everyday thinking that we feel pressure to maintain health in both areas. From intermittent fasting to marathon running, countless fitness movements and diet fads have spawned and flourished as a result. The government even legislates these pressures with taxes on sugary drinks and mandated hours of physical education in our schools.
With sleep, there is a different story entirely. As a society, we’ve grown to expect more from our waking hours. We’re made to think we need to hustle harder, work more, and achieve greater things. We shrug off sleep as an activity that can be done when ‘you’re dead. We’re reminded we need it only when we feel the stinging under our eyes and the mental fatigue setting in. In fact, people are sleeping less now than at any time in the last century. Research from Gallup shows that Americans average just 6.8 hours of sleep per night, down more than an hour since 1942.
Conversations around sleep health have long been dominated by defining, identifying, and treating sleep problems. We don’t talk about how the average person can get the most out of their sleep, we only talk about it in the context of illness.
Despite the lack of societal appreciation of sleep, Dr. Philip Gherman, Ph.D. and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania insists that “sleep is akin to a performance-enhancing drug.” Its restorative effects and ability to improve the quality of waking hours is well known. Yet, Dr. Gherman believes that there is a strange paradox around sleep whereby people prioritize waking hours and in doing so, sacrifice the quality of those hours.
At Eight Sleep, they believe that it is time to change the conversation around sleep entirely. Sleep should be viewed as an activity with enormous power to improve the quality of the human experience. Sleep should be something that is prioritized, measured, and worked on in the same way that nutrition and exercise are.
Sleep fitness is a real thing.
Changing the societal mindset around sleep! The first step is viewing it through the same lens with which we view fitness and nutrition. Sleep fitness is a real thing. It’s a state of overall health and well-being fueled by quality sleep. Being sleep fit results in a feeling of restoration, elevated energy levels and confidence. In short, being sleep fit enhances performance in everything we humans do. Dr. Gehrman defines sleep fitness as, “the extent to which we are getting sufficient quantity and quality of sleep to be energized and functioning at peak levels during the day.”
Most of all, sleep fitness is actionable, measurable and achievable. It opens room in the conversation for positive reinforcement and advocacy around sleep, something that is missing from the current dialogue. As a company, they’ve focused their attention, resources and time on developing products specifically designed to help individuals improve their sleep fitness.
Fueling human potential through optimal sleep.
Using innovative technology and personal biometrics, Eight Sleep products are designed to restore individuals to their peak energy levels each morning. Eight Sleep believes that helping to make our society more sleep fit is not just about getting people to sleep comfortably or sleep more, it’s about improving sleep quality so that the overall human experience and performance during waking hours can be enhanced.
https://www.eightsleep.com/comfort/