‘Smart pajamas’ can monitor home sleep disorders

If you ever had to endure a sleep study, you know it’s not the easiest way to catch some Mr.

Now, researchers may have developed the solution: comfortable, high, high, “smart pajamas” that can monitor home sleep disorders – without contagious patches, without large equipment and no visits to the clinic are required.

“Poor sleep has great effects on our physical and mental health, which is why proper sleep monitoring is essential,” said Luigi Occhipinti, a professor at the University of Cambridge who led the study. “However, the current golden standard for sleep monitoring, polysomnography or PSG, is expensive, complicated and is not suitable for long -term home use.”

While home appliances like sleep tests are simpler than PSG, the occhipinti said they often focus on only one condition and can be large or unpleasant.

Coated devices, like smartwatches, are more appropriate, but only thoughtful for the quality of your sleep, making them ineffective for monitoring sleep disorders.

“We need something that is comfortable and easy to use every night, but it’s quite accurate to provide significant information about the quality of sleep,” Occhipinti said.

To develop “intelligent pajamas”, Occhipinti and his team were built on their early work with a smart choker created for people with damage to speech. They reinforced fabric sensors to detect small skin movements, enabling them to monitor breathing-even when pajamas are freely dressed around the neck and chest.

They also created a machine learning model, called sleeepnet, which uses signals captured by sensors to identify six different sleeping states: nasal breathing, mouth breathing, snoring, tooth erosion, central sleep apnea and Obstructive sleep apnea.

Pizhame was tested for both healthy and sleepy individuals with sleep apnea, discovering sleeping states with an impressive accuracy of 98.6%.

A special starch process improves the sustainability of the sensors, so they can be thrown into the washing machine without losing their effectiveness.

The latter version also contains wireless data transfer, so sleeping information can be safely sent to your smartphone or computer.

“Sleep is so important for health and reliable sleep monitoring can be essential in preventive care,” Occhipinti said. “Since this dress can be used at home, rather than in a hospital or clinic, it can warn users of changes in their sleep that they can then discuss with their doctor.”

Researchers are now seeking to expand their sensors to use with other health conditions or even to monitor the baby. They are also working to make sensors very stable for long -term use.

The real cost of deprivation of sleep

Sleep is vital to your health, but over one -third of American adults report taking less than seven recommended closed eye hours every night.

In the short term, lack of sleep affects the mood, judgment and memory – and can increase your risk of accidents and damage. The economic number is just as serious, with the deprivation of sleep associated with a $ 44 billion in lost productivity each year.

Long -term, insufficient sleep can have extensive effects on your health. Chronic sleep deprivation increases your chances of developing high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

It also accelerates brain aging and potentially raises the risk of dementia. Mental health also suffers, with individuals deprived of sleep more likely to fight anxiety and depression.

When you are not sleeping enough, your immune system also gets a hit, making you more sensitive to the disease. In fact, research suggests that those who sleep less than seven hours a night are three times more likely to catch the common cold.

And if you are trying to pour those extra pounds, sleep deprivation can be the hidden culprit. Taking less than five hours of sleep per night is associated with a 50% higher risk of being overweight, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Reason? Sleep deprivation disrupts the equilibrium of hormones that regulate appetite, leading to increased feelings of hunger and stronger desires for high -calorie, fatty and sweet foods.