What is a Sleep Diary?
A sleep diary is a record of your sleep. It includes many aspects of your sleep experience, as well as the factors that may influence sleep. Sleep diaries can be an extremely important exhibit for your doctor or a sleep specialist to aid in identify and diagnosing sleep conditions. In fact, they might be requested of you by your doctor or a sleep center in order to get more accurate data about your sleeping.
Sleep diaries are generally kept over a period of at least two weeks, but the longer the better. Let's look at the top reasons to keep a sleep diary, as well as other important information.
Top 5 Reasons to Keep a Sleep Diary
Why keep a sleep diary? A sleep diary is generally kept for the following top five reasons:
- As an important sleep disorder diagnosis element
- Identify a root cause for lack of sleep or poor sleep quality
- Identify negative patterns of sleep
- Gather data for a doctor or sleep center before a sleep test
- Understand patterns in your sleep, such as for curiosity
Sleep diaries are easy to keep, usually only taking 5-10 minutes per day of effort.
What to Write in a Sleep Diary
The quality and usefulness of your sleep diary will depend entirely on what you keep in it, and how detailed you are. Here are the basic things to include in your sleep diary:
- Time you got in bed
- Time you woke up
- Estimated time taken to fall asleep
- How restful sleep was
- Number of times you roused during the night, and why you roused
- Amount of coffee consumed
- Amount of alcohol consumed
- Amount of exercise
- Things you did in hour leading up to bed
- Any additional information, such as sleep tracker app info, fitness tracker app info, etc.
It's common to keep information about exercise, alcohol/coffee drinking, and screen habits in a sleep diary
Sleep tracker apps or fitness tracker apps can be useful aids to a sleep diary for gaining additional information about your sleeping patterns.
Things to Look Out for In Your Sleep Diary
Analyzing your sleep diary is important. Generally what you want to look for are negative patterns that often recur, such as:
- Frequently rousing during the night
- Consistently getting less than 7 hours of sleep (as an adult)
- Constantly feeling exhausted with you wake up
- Having screen time or alcohol right before bed
Your doctor or sleep specialist may have additional parameters for how you should evaluate your sleep using your diary depending on the reason for keeping it.
Additional Tips for Keeping a Sleep Diary
Fortunately, keeping a sleep diary is pretty easy. Especially if you following these tips:
- Get a sleep diary online - there are many free versions available or you can use a notebook
- Keep the sleep diary next to your bed with a pen
- Keep the same routine everyday filling it out, such as first thing when you get into bed
- Be diligent and detailed in using it
- Use it in conjunction with a sleep tracker app or fitness watch
If you are struggling with sleep and are considering starting a sleep diary to track your sleep, please take this online sleep test to talk with one of our sleep health professionals.
