Do you ever go to bed early to get loads of sleep, yet when you’re alarm goes off you feel like a corpse? Chances are you got rudely awoken in the wrong part of your sleep cycle. The brain goes in cycles during the night between deep sleep, dream sleep, and being close to being awake. Depending on where you are in this cycle will have a large affect on how tired you are in the morning.

Enter “Sleep Cycle” – and app for the iphone. This amazing little gadget uses your iPhone’s accelerometer to monitor your movements during the night and determine when you’re most likely in and out of a dream state. Before you go to bed, set the app’s alarm clock, then place your iPhone on the corner of your bed. As you move around during the night, Sleep Cycle records your activity and, over the course of two or three nights, gradually learns your sleep patterns. Beginning about 30 minutes before your alarm is set to go off, the app begins watching for the lightest portions of your sleep cycle and gently prods you awake with your choice of soothing preset sounds.

I’ve been using this for the last few nights now and honestly I’m amazed! I did not really believe it would work but at 79 cent I thought it was worth the try. Every time I have used it, it has an uncanny ability to wake you up, just as you feel you were about to wake up naturally yourself! You set the latest time at which the alarm can go off, and it will wake you up some time before then. So not only do you get woken up at the time when you are going to feel the best, but it might be earlier than you expected so you have more time in the morning too – and will feel more awake than if you slept those extra 20 mins anyway!

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