Body Battery produces great results using Sleep for Kids App

Recently a client, Rob B, whom I had seen a few years ago contacted me to tell me he was struggling to sleep and felt quite run down.  He told me that his Doctor suggested that he purchase a Garmin watch because of a new feature feature called the Body Battery Energy Monitor.  This tool combines a variety of metrics to estimate your energy reserve throughout the day.  

The way it works is if you’re well rested, your body battery will increase until it hits 100. However if you don’t take time to rest, or if your rest isn’t actually restful, you’ll bottom out at 5.

Rob was finding that when he was asleep the body battery indicated over several nights of measurement that his level was around the 30 mark.  This really concerned him as it means that he was not having enough restful, quality sleep.  Details on how the body battery is calculated are here if you want more technical information about how it works.

Back to my client.  When I worked with Rob 2 years ago he used the Sleep for Kids app regularly, using the section Sleep and 12+ category to help him sleep and better manage his stress levels and it worked really well. 

So he decided to download the Sleep for Kids app again and see if it could once again help him but this time using the Body Battery to measure his progress. 

Here is an interview I did with him on the results when using the Sleep for Kids app and how it affected the body battery results.

 

How does the Body Battery Work?

It collects data about your heart rate and activity throughout the day. Your heart rate variability (HRV), activity levels, stress levels, and sleep data are combined to estimate your body battery.

It’s best to think of Body Battery as a cumulative thing. This data won’t tell you anything about a single moment in time. But tracking them over the course of a day – or multiple days – you can estimate how rested you are.

if you have a restful night’s sleep, you should expect your body battery to charge over night and be high in the morning. If you have a calm, restful day, you should find that it’s still high at the end of the day.  Unfortunately Rob B’s ratings were very low at night, around the 30 mark when he started using the Body Battery.  However when he started listening to the Sleep for Kids app each night before sleep, the number increased each day reaching well into the 90’s after only 3 days. The second thing he noticed was the amount of time he was sleeping increased significantly, from 5 to over 8 hours over the three days.

If you have a really active or stressful day, your body battery will drain over the course of the day and be low. If you top that off with a poor night of sleep, you may well wake up and find your body battery still drained which is what Rob was finding..

One of the best things about this feature is that it will help you better understand your body – and how it responds to different situations.

We know from MRI’s research that practicing meditation has a significant impact on perceived stress levels and alters brain regions associated with regulating emotion.

For any questions on the Sleep for Kids app or MindOverMatter clinic please contact me at elaine@mindovermattertherapy.com.au or hello@sleepforkids.app.