From A to ZZZs: Sleep foundation releases guidelines for night's rest

The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) has harnessed data collected from wearble devices to develop guidelines to identifying the key indications of quality sleep.

"Millions of Americans are sleep technology users,” said Max Hirshkowitz, PhD, chairman of the NSF board of directors. “These devices provide a glimpse into one's sleep universe, which is otherwise unknown. The National Sleep Foundation's guidelines on sleep duration, and now quality, make sense of it all—providing consumers with the resources needed to understand their sleep. These efforts help to make sleep science and technology more accessible to the general public that is eager to learn more about its health in bold new ways."

The information, published in Sleep Health, begins the NSF’s initiative to define exactly what makes for a quality good night’s sleep. A panel of experts was assembled and voted in multiple rounds to identify key findings of good sleep, which have now been endorsed by the American Association of Anatomists, American Academy of Neurology, American Physiological Society, Gerontological Society of America, Human Anatomy and Physiology Society, Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, Society for Research of Human Development and Society for Women's Health Research.

The indicators of quality sleep include:

• Spending 85 percent sleep time in bed.
• Falling asleep within 30 minutes.
• Waking up once a night at the most.
• Being awake for 20 minutes of less when waking up from sleeping.

In the recent NSF Sleep Heath Index, results showed 27 percent of people take longer than 30 minutes to fall asleep. This information, paired with information gathered by sleep technology, shows the ability for these wearables to help people keep a sleep routine while developing technologies to identify other factors of a good sleep across age groups.

"In the past, we defined sleep by its negative outcomes including sleep dissatisfaction, which were useful for identifying underlying pathology. Clearly this is not the whole story. With this initiative, we are now on a better course towards defining sleep health," said Maurice Ohayon, MD, DSc, PhD, the director of the Stanford Sleep Epidemiology Research Center.