A study with the Apple Watch shows that most people hardly get enough sleep. it's time to do something about it! 
Research into sleeping behaviour
Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital used data from the Apple Heart and Movement Study to examine people's sleep behavior. Data from more than 42,000 Apple Watch users was used. The researchers analyzed more than 2.9 million nights of sleep and found that only 31% of participants get enough sleep. That is, at least 7 hours of sleep per night, which is the minimum recommendation for healthy adults. Sleeping less puts you at risk for cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline and dementia, depression, obesity and elevated blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels, according to the American Heart Association.
Here are a few discoveries:
- On weekdays, 66.4% of the participants went to bed before midnight, but during the weekend this drops to 56.6%.
- For people who have at least shared 10 nights of sleep data (these were 42,455 participants), the average sleep duration per individual was 6:27 hours.
- Less than 40% of participants achieved the recommended sleep duration of 7 hours.
American Sleep Behavior
An important footnote to these figures is that it was conducted among Americans, a nation that typically goes to bed early and gets up early. Apple announced the Heart and Movement Study in 2019, along with two other women's health and hearing studies. “Anyone with an Apple Watch” and the Apple Research app on the iPhone could join in, but in fact it was only open to Americans. This slightly colors the results and it also produces results that are less interesting to us. For example, it turned out that residents of Washington get the most sleep: they had the highest percentage of participants who got more than 7 hours of sleep (38.3%), while in Hawaii only 24.2% slept enough. There will be a second round of results from the study by Brigham and Women's Hospital.
According to the researchers, it will be published soon. Apple has gradually introduced more and more functions to monitor and improve your sleep behavior. Here are a few options you can use:
- Measure sleep with your Apple Watch: these are the best apps
- Sleep functions on the Apple Watch: is Apple's smartwatch the ideal bed partner?
- How to use the sleep timer: fall asleep with your iPhone
- How to set a sleep schedule on the iPhone with Bedtime
See also 
Sleep functions on the Apple Watch: is Apple's smartwatch the ideal bed partner?
The Apple Watch has various sleep functions. You can see how it works in this guide, where we walk through everything from setting your sleep schedule to viewing your sleep stages. You need to know this about sleeping with the Apple Watch!
You can also get a variety of third-party apps and accessories:
- The best iPhone apps for sleep and sleep tracking
- The smartest sleep accessories for a better night's sleep
- The best accessories to measure sleep
See also 
