A sleep diary is a record of your sleeping, including all of the aspects of your sleep. This includes data about your sleep, patterns of sleep, and sleep habits in order to identify potential problems that could signal an underlying sleep disorder. Sleep diaries are generally kept over a period of at least two weeks, but the longer the better.
Sleep diaries might be requested of you by your doctor or a sleep center in order to get more accurate data about your sleeping.
Why keep a sleep diary? A sleep diary is generally kept for the following reasons:
Sleep diaries are easy to keep, usually only taking 5-10 minutes per day of effort.
When you're filling out your sleep diary, it's helpful to know what to put in there. Here are common things people will include in their sleep diary:
Using a sleep tracker app or fitness tracking watch in conjunction with a sleep diary is very useful for gaining additional information about your sleeping.
Link to Free Sleep Foundation Sleep Diary
Analyzing your sleep diary is a process of looking for patterns in your sleep, especially negative patterns. Things to look for are:
Your doctor or sleep specialist may have additional parameters for how you should evaluate your sleep diary depending on the reason for keeping a diary.
If you are struggling with sleep and are considering starting a sleep diary to track your sleep, please take this online sleep test to get connected with one of our sleep health professionals.