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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), "Insufficient sleep is associated with a number of chronic diseases and conditions, such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, obesity, and depression. Sufficient sleep is increasingly being recognized as an essential aspect of chronic disease prevention and health promotion."

With the sleep tracker, you can track your sleep patterns, and identify patterns of behavior that result in better sleep or more restless sleep, from drinking warm milk to uncomfortable temperatures. For mothers of young children, the sleep tracker can be used to track their babies' sleep patterns.

How do I get a personalized Sleep Tracker?

If you're a registered member of MedHelp, go to My MedHelp and click on the Trackers tab. There you'll see a list of available trackers, including the Sleep Tracker. Click "Add Tracker". You'll then set up your ovulation tracker, run through a quick tutorial, and start tracking.

If you're not yet a member of MedHelp, you'll first need to Sign Up. Then you'll be able to go to My MedHelp and add this tracker.

I don't want other people to see my tracker. What do I do?

You can change the privacy setting of your tracker at any time by clicking "Tracker Settings" on your tracker page. You can change the privacy setting to Public, Private, or Friends Only.

How do I see historical data?

At the top of the tracker, you'll find a timeline with a slider. Click on the slider and drag it left and right. As you move, you'll see the start date displayed. When the start date is at your desired date, let go and the chart will update to start on that date.

How much sleep do I need?

We've created a Health Page to cover this topic: How Much Sleep Do You Need Each Night 

When I set up my tracker, it asks me to choose a time for when the day begins. What does this mean and what should I enter?

The sleep chart displays your sleep sessions for a given day and time. When you set a time for when the day should start, you're choosing where the y-axis should begin. If you set it to 6:00 pm, the y-axis will start at 6 p.m. and go through 5 p.m. If you set it to start 12:00 am midnight, the y-axis will start at 12:00 am midnight and end at 11:00 pm. Some people sleep at night while other sleep during the day and work at night, so this feature allows everyone to use the sleep tracker.

To set up your tracker, you can set this field to anytime that you typically aren't asleep. For people who sleep at night without naps, 6:00 pm would work . If you typically sleep from 3:00 pm to 10:00 pm, you might want to set your tracker to start at 1:00 pm.

If you take a lot of naps, it gets a little more complicated. It depends on if you want to count naps as part of the upcoming night's sleep or the previous night's sleep. If it's the former, move the start time before the nap. If it's the latter, move the start time after the nap. For example, if you typically sleep from 11:00 pm to 4:00 am and take a nap from 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm, the day will look very different if you set your tracker to begin at 6:00 pm or 1:00 pm. If you set it to 6:00 pm, the nap won't count towards the next night's sleep. If you set it to 3:00 pm, it would.

You can change this setting at any time, so feel free to play around with it until you get the chart to look the way you like. You can access this setting by clicking "Tracker Settings" on your Sleep Tracker.

I don't sleep in one big block of time. Can I still track my sleep with the Sleep Tracker?

Yes, the sleep tracker allows you to track one or multiple sleep sessions, including naps. After you enter your first sleep time, click the "Add Another" link directly below the times you just entered. You can keep repeating this until you have entered all the blocks of time that you slept.