Estimated reading time: 7 mins.
We’re excited to share some big news with you. The SoundSleep update is finally here! We’ve been working hard on new features to help you track your snoring and – for the first time – your breathing disturbances.
What’s new?
Breathing Disruption Index (BDI)
Worried about sleep apnoea? This brand new feature tracks how often you stop breathing or struggle to breathe in the night. It’s a good indicator of apnoeic events (apnoeas and hypopneas).
Some snorers find that their airway becomes so narrow that the walls of the airway stick together and close up. This usually happens for 10-30 seconds but can occur for longer – sometimes up to 50 times an hour or even more. When the airway finally opens up again, they’ll produce a loud, violent snore. This is known as an apnoea. Sometimes the airway may not fully close, but becomes so narrow that they experience an oxygen drop in their blood. This is called a hypopnoea. Frequent apnoeas and hypopneas mean you most likely have obstructive sleep apnoea.
The BDI will show how often per hour on average you stopped breathing or struggled to breathe in the night. We calculate this by noting the number of apnoea or hypopnea events and dividing this by the duration of the time recorded. This generates a number of apnoea/hypopnoea events per hour.
Bug fixes
Not the insect type. We’ve made improvements to help the app become less glitchy and run more smoothly.
Fresh design
SoundSleep has a new and improved look. We’ve streamlined our design to give you a seamless experience.
New-look reports screens
We want it to be as easy as possible for you to track your snoring. Our new-look report screens do exactly that. The addition of the BDI gives you a more well-rounded picture of your snoring; the reports also include time spent snoring and snore intensity.
How are these numbers calculated?
Time spent snoring
To give you an accurate percentage, we gather the amount of 10 second periods that contain snoring. So if you snore once every 10 seconds, it’ll count as 100% snoring.
Snore intensity
This is a combination of volume and duration. In terms of volume, a quiet room is classed as 0, and a very loud snore is 100. For duration, anything more than 8 seconds in the 10 second period scores as 100. The snore intensity is then the average of those two numbers for a 10 second window. The graph will show you the range of these 10 second window values over a 15 minute period.
Update and upgrade for free
To download the app from the Apple App Store, click here. To download from the Google Play Store, click here. Or if you’re one step ahead and already have SoundSleep downloaded, you can visit these links to update your app.