Posted by Ryan Johnson on 03 29, 2010

Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock

Categories: Healthcare & Fitness, | 4 comments | |

I don’t know about you but I work pretty long days and typically hit the hay between 1-2 AM most nights. I know for a fact that I’m sleep deprived and could use a little help to keep me on track. In steps Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock by Proactive Life. This app isn’t just a replication of the iPhone’s built in alarm function, it has a handful of useful extras that help you get more sleep and wake up on time.

Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock has been developed with sleep and behavioral science in mind, and focusses most of it’s energies on the amount of sleep you get compared with the circadian component. These two components are the biggest indicators as to whether or not you’re getting a healthy amount of sleep. Circadian component is basically sleep relative to time of day and sunlight. There are chemicals in your eyes that even when shut can detect sunlight, get your melatonin pumping, and naturally try to wake you up. So basically, if you’re sleeping with sunlight tickling your eyelids then you’re not getting the same quality of sleep as you would in the middle of the night when it’s pitch dark.

So how does Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock help you sleep better? Well, it basically keeps track of your daily sleep habits and over time provides you with feedback as to whether or not you’re getting the amount of sleep you need. It does this by keeping a sleep diary for you. All you do is set a daily sleep goal, say 8 hours, and then each night when you set your alarm it starts recording the amount of time you sleep. The moment you stop the alarm from sounding in the morning you’re sleep total is logged. Because it’s a sleep diary you can easily record any other sleep you get during the day as well. So if you need a nap, set yourself an alarm, make a note that it’s a power nap, and it’ll add the time to you daily total. Depending on the amount of sleep you get Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock provides you with green, yellow, and red feedback. Green means you got the sleep you needed, yellow for when you’re under your goal by less than an hour, and red if you’re more than an hour under. Give yourself a week with this app and you’ll start to get an idea of how close you are to getting the amount of sleep you need to function at your best.

Something else I like about this app is that it has a feature that helps you wake up. Because I don’t get enough sleep, I have a heck of a time getting out of bed. Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock comes with a game to help you wake up in the morning. If you elect to turn the game mode on, then the moment you press the button to stop the alarm the game starts up. All you have to do is touch a sun image that appears on the screen serveral times. I realize this may sound pretty dumb, but it really does work. There’s an easy, medium, and hard setting, and in each case the game lasts just long enough to make you fully awake. Additionally your game performance is automatically tracked which helps give you a read on how groggy you are when you wake up, which is a sure sign you’re not getting quality z’s. Each morning that you’re more and more coherent when you play the game, your scores will increase, and it’ll be clear that you’re sleeping much better.

Overall I found Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock to be a great app. In addition to what I described above there are additional features built in to help you sleep and wake up easier. There’s a setting to play ambient music while you sleep, the standard alarm clock sound is pleasant, and you can choose to play your favorite song from your iPod as your alarm. You can even track your sleep on days that you don’t want to wake up to an alarm. There’s a “wake naturally” setting that’ll track your sleep time quietly and when you wake up just press the “permanently awakened” button to stop the timer. So no matter what you sleep preference is you can track your sleep adequately and by setting goals can improve your sleep habits and your overall health and fitness. If you’re in the market for an alarm clock/sleep improvement app I encourage you to give Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock a try.

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