4 sleep apps to try during the quarantine

A good night's sleep always comes with a long list of health benefits such as it helps your body fight back, keeps your heart healthy, reduces stress and depression, improves cognitive function and many more. Amid COVID-19 pandemic, it has become more important to have a sound sleep. But many people are struggling to get 7-9 hours of sleep. According to a recent survey, 72.6% of people in Bangladesh are suffering from insomnia during this time of lockdown. These 4 sleep apps out there to send you happily off to your dreamland.

Sleep cycle 

Sleep Cycle uses the accelerometer of your smartphone to monitor your movement. You need to place the smartphone near your bed so that it can register whether you're in light sleep, deep sleep or a dream state known as random eye movement (REM) sleep. Analyzing these details, it shows daily sleep graphs and pinpoints the optimal time to wake you up. The Trends dashboard also measures seep quality and snoring. This app has an intelligent alarm clock that wakes you up gently. Under settings, you can choose an alarm sound. You can customize it with a favourite song of yours. Set snooze options and select a 30-minute period during when you wish to wake up.

Twilight

After a long-screening time, it is common to have trouble in sleeping. It can be due to blue light of your mobile screen that suppresses the production of melatonin (sleep-inducing hormone) and gives you a digital eye strain. Twilight, an Android app, automatically adjusts your screen's brightness according to the time of the day. It filters out the bright and harsh blue light that prevents you from falling into a deep sleep. Twilight gradually adds a red filter over the display as the hour's drag on, and it is soft on the eyes. The intensity of this red filter is based on the sunrise and sunset times where you're currently living in. 

Relax Melodies

If you are facing trouble relaxing into a sound sleep, then try this app. Relax melodies has a large library with over 160 sleep sounds, meditation, calm music, white noise, and many more. The sleep-aid provides a huge collection of guided meditations, body-mind exercises, and breathing techniques just one tap away. If you want to hear some bedtime stories that can lull you to sleep, this app has a variety of genres such as non-fiction, mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, a fairytale. Try this app to be in a deep slumber. 

Calm

It is quite different from other sleep apps that use a structured manner to present their mediations. With Calm, you can go about it how you want. There are 30+ free basic white noise sounds for relaxation. It offers some simple relaxing stories that will lull you to sleep like Relax Melodies. In meditation menu, there are over 100+ meditations with options for both beginners and advanced users that you may need. You can track your daily progress with features such as 'Daily streaks' and 'Time spent meditating'. Calm has some free features, but for some additional features and masterclasses, a subscription fee is needed. 

All these apps are available for both Android and iOS.