This App Is the Newest Way to Treat Nightmares

Jacquie Baker, a former Air Force engineer, has had nightmares four or five nights a week for nearly a decade. The scenarios vary, but the feeling of helplessness is always the same: she’ll watch someone get murdered, or she’ll forget her pre-flight checklist and the plane she’s riding will crash. “I started having skin issues, because I was constantly sleeping in my own sweat,” she says. “I had to change my sheets multiple times a night.” After struggling through those nights, Baker would often have to miss the morning or day of work. She was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stemming from her time in the military, as well as anxiety and depression. But no medications or interventions helped her nightmares—until 2021, when she began using Nightware, an Apple Watch-enabled app that helps to interrupt nightmares. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The system—which includes an Apple Watch preloaded with Nightware and locked to only run that app—taps into Baker’s nighttime biorhythms, including her heart rate, breathing, and movements. Using an algorithm, it determines when these metrics escalate enough to indicate a nightmare. The watch then buzzes at her wrist, pulling her out of the dream without necessarily awakening her. The morning after using the device for the first time, she was disappointed because she thought she hadn’t had a nightmare. She hadn’t woken up overni...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Mental Health Wellbeing Source Type: news