Proactive Sleep iPhone App is the Top 5 Most Sold App in Health and Fitness

United States of America -- Free-Press-Release.com-- Mar 28, 2010 -- Good examples of smart phone applications that provide personalized behavioral feedback by collecting data on an everyday task are the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock and the Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock, which track sleep by setting an alarm clock. This has been a selling point for many iPhone users. These apps are currently in the top three most bought applications in the Health and Fitness section of the app store. The Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock attempts to wake the user up in a lighter phase of sleep by detecting the user's movements, while the Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock tracks your sleep in a sleep diary and provides you with feedback on the two major components of sleep: the homeostatic and circadian components.

It is important for behavioral modifying applications like these to provide accurate feedback that helps promote a better understanding of cyclical behaviors. While the selling point for the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock is quite attractive, sleep professionals would agree that no evidence has ever demonstrated that you can wake someone in a lighter phase of sleep by measuring their body movements. Using an electrode, like is the case with the Zeo alarm clock, is a different story, but there are issues in using movements to measure sleep stage because decreased grogginess in the morning is due to not waking up in deep sleep, yet there can be body movement in both deep sleep and light sleep. Additionally, morning grogginess is not an independent phenomenon, it is directly caused by not getting enough sleep (the homeostatic component) or waking during the trough of your circadian component, i.e. waking up too early. So by improving behaviors related to the homeostatic and circadian component, sleep is improved at its core, which can in turn decrease morning grogginess.

The Proactive Sleep Alarm Clock, addresses these core components of sleep by providing feedback on sleep amount and sleep consistency. In this application, the user sets a sleep goal and the application provides the feedback on how well the sleep goal is met. Similarly, the user gets information on the consistency of bedtimes, which can be used to evaluate whether a sleep problem is due to a circadian related issue. However, clearly more work needs to be done to improve this application. Currently, information on sleep amount and sleep consistency is simply displayed to users. Yet what is needed is to predict behaviors and determine how to adjust behaviors related to sleep by analyzing factors that affect aspects of sleep.

The key to effective feedback of sleep related behaviors is to collect data on various different behaviors because behaviors can interact with each other in complex ways. While there are various applications related to sleep, exercise, mood, and diet; no applications have integrated all of these behaviors into a single product. Yet there is an interesting relationship between sleep, exercise, mood, and diet. Awareness of this relationship may lead to healthier decision-making and can be used by clinicians to evaluate mental and physical health.

The use of applications in everyday life is growing exponentially. With over 120,000 applications currently on sale in the app store and over 2 billion applications sold, there is clearly a lot of public attention on improving health and lifestyle using smart phone applications. Applications that integrate everyday tasks with data collection of behaviors have the greatest potential in providing helpful feedback. If the scientific and clinical community embrace these applications, great strides can be made in improving behavioral treatments of health related problems.

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Proactive Life
Daniel Gartenberg
732 6681250
http://www.proactivesleep.com