Temperature is one of the most powerful and overlooked drivers of sleep quality. Your body naturally shifts its temperature with each change in sleep stage (e.g. REM and deep sleep). When your sleep environment can adapt to these changes, heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), and sleep quality all improve (blog, publication).
The Pod with Autopilot (AP) 3.0 makes temperature adjustments based on your current sleep stage and previous night’s sleep quality. We wanted to know how AP 3.0 impacts cardiovascular (HR/HRV) health and sleep. So we collected 7,893 nights of sleep and cardiovascular (HR/HRV) data from 262 Eight Sleep members and compared their metrics from 2 weeks before sleeping on the Pod to 2 weeks after sleeping on the Pod.
Key takeaways:
After sleeping on the Pod with Autopilot (AP) 3.0 for 2 weeks:
- Members with average sleep initially, saw on average:
- Sleeping heart rate (HR) decreased by 2% (-1 bpm) and heart rate variability (HRV) improved by 10% (3 ms).
- Nightly deep sleep increased by ~4% (+2 minutes).
- Members with below-average sleep initially, saw on average:
- Nightly deep sleep increased by ~9% (+4 minutes).
- Wake after sleep onset (WASO) decreased by 2% (-2 minutes).
- Women with below-average sleep initially, saw WASO decreased by 7% (-5 minutes) on average.
What is AP 3.0?
Autopilot is the intelligence behind the Pod. Autopilot 3.0 continuously refines your Pod temperatures throughout the night based on your unique biology (sex, age), sleep stages, and bedroom conditions, and previous night’s sleep quality. Ultimately, AP 3.0 provides the temperatures most important for your recovery using a proprietary, research-backed algorithm.
How we tested the impact of AP 3.0
Sleep and cardiovascular recovery (heart rate, HR; heart rate variability, HRV) data were collected via Oura Ring from 262 new Pod users (average age 47 ± 10 years; 26% female, 69% male, 5% other). Sleep and cardiovascular metrics were compared from 2 weeks before and 2 weeks after beginning to sleep on the Pod with AP 3.0.
Using the Pod with AP 3.0 significantly improved cardio recovery and sleep quality
After 2 weeks of sleeping on the Pod with AP 3.0, participants experienced meaningful improvements in both cardiovascular recovery and sleep quality.
Pod users with average sleep metrics
Participants with average sleep metrics before sleeping on the Pod experienced the following improvements after sleeping on the Pod for 2 weeks:
- Improved cardiovascular (HR/HRV) recovery:
- Sleeping HR decreased by 2% (-1 bpm) on average, and up to 5% (-3 bpm) for some participants.
- Sleeping HRV increased by 10% (+3 ms) on average, and up to 20% (+6 ms) for some participants.
- Increased deep sleep:
- Deep sleep increased ~4% (+2 minutes) on average each night, equivalent to 1 additional hour of deep sleep each month.
- Some participants experienced up to 17% (+11 minutes) more deep sleep each night.
These findings are important because lower sleeping HR and higher HRV are strong indicators of overall fitness (source, source) and deep sleep is critical for physical restoration, immune function, and metabolic health (source, source, source).
Pod users with initially below-average sleep metrics
The largest improvements were seen in participants with below-average sleep before getting the Pod.
- Participants with below-average deep sleep initially (<15% of the night) gained ~9% (+4 minutes) more deep sleep each night, equivalent to 2 additional hours of deep sleep each month.
- Participants with high WASO initially (30+ minutes each night) reduced WASO by 2% (-2 minutes) each night, equivalent to about 1 hour less each month.
- Among women with below-average sleep initially, WASO decreased by 7% (-5 minutes per night), or about 2.5 fewer hours awake each month.
Autopilot 3.0 optimizes recovery so you can maximize your day
Dynamically adjusting bed temperature based on sleep stage and prior-night sleep significantly improves HR/HRV, increases deep sleep, and reduces WASO, especially for those with below-average sleep initially. The Pod continuously aligns bed temperature with the body’s changing physiological needs, providing active overnight recovery to help you achieve deeper, more restorative sleep night after night.
Already an Eight Sleep Pod member? Make sure AP 3.0 is enabled in your app. Not yet a member? See what the Pod can do for your sleep.
Appendix
Participants & procedures
Wearable ring data were collected from 262 new Pod users (69 female, 181 male, 12 other; 47 ± 10 years) across 7,893 nights to compare sleep data from the 2 weeks before vs. 2 weeks after beginning to sleep on Pod with Sleep Stage Autopilot (AP 3.0).
For the purposes of this study, logging deep sleep for less than 15% of the night or being awake for more than 30 minutes after falling asleep were classified as below-average sleep quality. Spending at least 15% of the night in deep sleep and having less than 30 minutes awake after falling asleep was classified as average sleep quality.
Statistical analyses
Sleep and cardiovascular metrics were grouped into “before” vs. “after” Pod use and paired t-tests were used to evaluate differences between metrics, where an alpha of 0.05 defined significance. Participants were only included in the study if they had at least two weeks of wearable data before and after beginning to sleep on the Pod. All findings reported above are statistically significant (P < 0.05) and all sample sizes were at least n=28.
