Many smartwatches and fitness bands these days offer some form of sleep monitoring or another. The most they can do, however, is tell you how well or poorly you slept. There’s really not much help it can offer to those suffering from regular nightmares, especially those induced by PTSD. That may soon be changing, even if only a little bit, with the FDA’s approval to market the NightWare system for the Apple Watch precisely to help reduce adult sleep disturbance caused by these nightmares.
The Health app consolidates data from your iPhone, Watch, and third-party apps you already use, so you can view all your progress in one convenient place. See your long-term trends, or dive into the daily details for a wide range of health metrics. Check out Apple Watch Support to learn even more about closing your rings and using the Workout app. You can also get tips on using Apple Music and Apple Podcasts, measuring your heart rate, and setting reminders to breathe. And that’s just the start of what you’ll find. Visit Apple Watch Support. You can't escape us. AdultSwim.com is part of Turner Entertainment Digital which is part of the Turner Sports & Entertainment Digital Network.
The idea behind NightWare builds upon the foundations of most sleep monitoring features. It uses biometrics to measure the wearer’s sleep quality and, after sending the data to the company’s servers and running it through an algorithm, NightWare creates a unique and personalized profile for the patient. This profile is then used as the baseline for comparing the wearer’s future sleep quality.
What sets NightWare apart from sleep monitors is how it reacts to what it deems to be a nightmare. If body movement and heart rate suggest that is the case, it will make the Apple Watch vibrate in an attempt to interrupt the nightmare without waking up the user.
There are, however, a lot of caveats to this Apple Watch-based device. It shouldn’t be used, for example, by someone prone to sleepwalking or violence during nightmares. It’s also not recommended to wear the device when reading or watching TV, activities that could throw off the app and presume the user is having a nightmare. There is also a risk that it could ironically induce daytime sleepiness, at which point the patient should inform his or her healthcare provider.
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The FDA announcement also notes that NightWare isn’t a standalone and independent tool and should be used in conjunction with medication and therapy. In fact, NightWare isn’t even something you can simply download from the App Store and requires a prescription to get. The FDA approval, however, could open the doors to similar tools that would take smartwatches to the next level in the medical field.