Tracking of sleep is all in the wrist

No wonder I'm exhausted.

According to the gadget I attached to my wrist before I went to bed the other night, I am a pitiful sleeper.

Between the time my head hit the pillow around 11 p.m. and the moment the Sleeptracker PRO alarm buzzed me from slumber at 6:49 a.m., I was restless an average of every 43 minutes, 41 seconds.

It's not as bad as it sounds. In fact, the typical sleeper is in that "almost-awake" state every 20 to 35 minutes.

All of this data comes courtesy of the folks at Innovative Sleep Solutions, the Atlanta-based makers of the Sleeptracker PRO device.

I've been wearing the oversize watch to bed, off and on, for the past couple of weeks in search of insight into my sleep patterns.

If you program it properly, the Sleeptracker records the times of your "almost awake" moments overnight, and you can upload them to your computer the next morning. You can note whether you ate a late dinner the previous night, or worked out particularly hard, or had a stressful day – all factors that can affect sleep.

Theoretically, you can use this information to detect patterns and help you map out better sleep habits.

In the short term, says the manufacturer, the device encourages you to wake up more refreshed by buzzing you out of bed at a moment – during a window of time that you set – when your body is naturally almost awake.

But is the Sleeptracker practical for most people, particularly at a cost of $179?

At least one expert is skeptical.

"My sense is it's a bit of a gimmick," says Dr. Lydia Wytrzes, medical director of the Sutter Sleep Disorder Program in Sacramento. "If you're a bad sleeper, I'm not sure how this thing would help you."

The watch's internal "accelero-meter" detects restless movements that suggest when you're in a period of light sleep, according to the company.

Wytrzes, a neurologist, says the technology sounds like actigraphy, which is used by sleep researchers to study alertness and sleep. "It's basically a motion sensor," she says.

For people using it at home, the Sleeptracker very well "might help wake you up when you're less likely to be groggy," Wytrzes says. "That's great. That's interesting."

But even that benefit, she says, has its limits.

"Yeah, you may wake up groggy to an alarm clock," she says. But for most people, that's not a big deal. "After you get up and take a shower, you're usually OK."

The Sleeptracker is unquestionably cool. And even a relative Luddite like myself had little trouble programming it. It performed mostly as promised, although my first test model turned out to be defective and was promptly replaced by the company. The watch generated data that, had I been able to collect it for weeks or months, might have allowed me to pinpoint troublesome behavior patterns causing me to lose sleep.

But am I ready to make it an important part of my bedtime routine?

Probably not.

I think I'll invest the $179 in a couple of new pillows.