Proactive Sleep Fact Sheet: An App For Insomniacs

Feb. 7, 2011 - PRLog -- Description:
   Having Proactive Sleep for your smart phone is like having a sleep clinician in your pocket. Sleep clinicians advise their patients to keep a personal record of certain daily behaviors that are known to affect sleep. These behaviors are sleep, diet, exercise, alcohol intake, caffeine intake, and medication intake.  These behaviors can all be kept track of using Proactive Sleep. Maladaptive behaviors that affect getting a good night of sleep are identified and then cognitive behavioral interventions are introduced that are designed to improve sleep. This thereby allows its users to live a healthily and better-rested life.  

Features:
   Sleep Diary. Tracks how your unique sleep patterns affect you simply by setting an alarm clock. Information that is displayed includes a graph of the duration of your sleep, the number of times you wake-up during sleep, the consistency of the duration of your sleep from night to night, and the level of grogginess that you feel when you wake up in the morning. Averages of all these sleep statistics are displayed so that you can compare a single night of sleep with your norm. This information is gathered by determining when you set your alarm, when your alarm goes off, if you press a button to indicate that you are awakened during the night and your score on the stimulating vigilance game that you have the option to play when the alarm goes off.
   Sleep or Dream Journal. Embedded in the application is a sleep and / or dream notepad. This allows you to keep track of what is affecting your sleep or to keep track of your dreams.
   Proactive Game. A game that is provided in the app enables you to receive motor and auditory stimulation when your alarm goes off. Scientific research shows that after awakening, stimulating activities help prevent morning grogginess. Also, your score on the game is used to assess how sleepy you are after awakening.
   A Snooze feature. Provides for a gradual wake-up.
   Wake-up to any song in your iTunes Library.
   Ambient Music. Soothes you to fall asleep with ambient sounds that you can select from your iTunes library. These sounds act as a behavioral trigger for relaxation. Such triggers are known as stimulus-control. Another example of stimulus control is using your bed only for sleep in order to more strongly associate the bed with sleep.
   Nightstand clock. View what time it is after your alarm is set.
   Information Section. Includes useful facts and tips about sleep and ways that you can improve your sleep.


Awards: Winner of the $10,000 1st place Schoof's Prize for Innovation and Creativity
   Featured on Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science
   Feature in Sleep Review Magazine

Key Dates: Created in 2009

Creators: Created by Daniel Gartenberg. He is pursuing a Ph.D. for psychology at George Mason University.
   Dustin Pfannenstiel and Adam Emery develop software for the iPhone, while Nick Penardes develops software for the Android platform.
   Dr. Daniel Taylor provides Proactive Sleep with the Muscle Relaxation training.
   SmartWav is a company with expertise in Ambient Music. Provide Proactive Sleep with the Miracle Sleep System Loop and is integrated with Jay Oliver's musical engineering with the iPhones ability to loop music throughout the night.

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Proactive Life believes that when science meets technology products that are proactive and healthy can emerge. Specifically, we make iPhone applications that people can use to improve their daily lives. Our first application is based on sleep.