Teeth grinding, snorting, gasping, jaw clenching and choking – the nation’s long-suffering partners are being kept up at night by noisy mouth breathers, snorers (which I’m still blaming on my pug) or those with more serious sleep disorders such as sleep apnoea.
I visited a laboratory on a University of Cambridge science campus for Sleep Awareness Week to meet a team of engineering PHD students and their professor who have been beavering away on an invention using the wonder material graphene that could also feasibly drive down divorce rates.
Director of research of the engineering department, Luigi G. Occhipinti, and his three clever 25-year-old students Chenyu Tang, Zibo Zhang and Wentian Yi, have invented the world’s first AI-driven smart garment technology for speech and breath monitoring – or AI jim jams to those of us without a PHD in engineering.
Who among us hasn’t downloaded a snoring app to either monitor our own nocturnal noises, or indeed, recorded their snoring bed fellows as proof? I admit I tried one myself, and was horrified to discover that I had episodes of “epic snoring” during the night.
However, when I then listened back to the recordings, I realised there were two culprits that night – me with my gentle snores and my pug Bozza’s violent snorting. And I’m sticking to that story.
At this point, the Cambridge engineers’ AI pyjamas can’t cure snoring partners, but they can accurately pinpoint their sleeping patterns and even tell if they breathe through their nose or mouth, if they snore, have bruxism, or more importantly, suffer from serious sleep disorders such as sleep apnoea and obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA).
Former Radio 2 DJ Zoe Ball has spoken out about the jaw pain and headaches caused by her bruxism caused by teeth clenching at night. I also suffer from this, but I don’t expect it to be cured until my teenager finally leaves home.
The team demonstrated their world first prototype at the Cambridge Graphene Centre just outside the city centre, a state-of-the-art building where both academics and industrial scientists investigate the uses for this durable and flexible futuristic substance – from protecting spacecraft to everyday uses such as touch screens.
Extracted from the mineral graphite and made of pure carbon, the substance is made up of a single layer of atoms that are incredibly strong, flexible and conductive. It is this ultra-sensitive conductivity which is the key to Professor Luigi’s work, and like all good inventions, in fact was discovered while working on another project.
“Originally the idea was to develop a smart choker device – a single sensor in the throat area – for people who had lost the capability to speak,” explains Luigi, 56.
“We were trying to investigate the properties of the graphene when it is subject to strain in a flexible fabric, and we discovered that the device produces what I call ‘micro-cracks’ in the face of the textile when stretched.
“These are fully reversible and are the mechanism responsible for the change in resistance of the graphene-textile sensors.”
“When people speak, they use their laryngeal muscles, and using this textile we could decode the vibrations and translate them with words with a very high accuracy thanks to these ultra-sensitive sensors. But our choker was so sensitive it could even distinguish between types of breathing.”
It was at this point the team had their eureka moment. “Speaking to doctors, we realised there are several conditions that are caused by unhealthy breathing which affect a great number of the population.”
Ideally everyone should breathe through their noses, especially when we sleep at night as it reduces the risk of snoring or sleep apnea. Nasal breathing also filters out allergens and helps the diaphragm move more efficiently, and allows deeper breathing.
However mouth breathers and snorers and those with more serious sleep disorders like sleep apnoea are at greater risk of developing serious health conditions.
Along with the indignity of being banished to sleep in the spare room, interrupted sleep not only causes chronic fatigue, but a host of other health problems from weight gain to high blood pressure and cardiovascular conditions.
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Phil Harris)
Currently people with sleep problems join the long waiting list for a sleep clinic and then have to spend the night at hospital to undergo a sleep study – known as a polysomnography – which entails being hooked up to a diagnostic test that monitors body functions as patients try their best to sleep.
But the Cambridge engineering team has come up with a lightweight and flexible garment which replaces most of those wires and machines with a simple piece of soft and stretchable nightwear.
“We came up with the idea of integrating our sensors into nightwear that can be worn with the minimum number of wires to detect sleeping patterns – and even if it moves around the neck, it will still transmit information.”
Using graphene ink which was screen printed onto fabric, Luigi points out the black circles on the neck. “This is a six channel device with graphene sensors that pick up the micro-vibrations in the throat from breathing, while the silver tracks conduct and extract the information.”
The prototype garment currently looks a bit like the classic Fila or Sergio Tacchini roll neck worn by casuals in the 1980s, and certainly needs to come in a slightly bigger size when it’s manufactured for general use – I just about managed to squeeze it on over my head when I tried it on, but it was perfectly comfortable.
“The data from the signals are then processed and are analysed in real time by our smart AI-based model we call Sleepnet,” he continues. “And that information can then be shared with a doctor who will interpret the results and treat the patient either locally or remotely.”
The research prototype is still in development but Professor Luigi not only sees it being used in hospitals – but also at home for patients to do their own personalised monitoring. “It’s difficult to estimate its price in the future but it cost less than £50 to build our prototype, so it will definitely be affordable,” he adds.
We’ve already got used to fitness watches and activity tracking and now it is only a matter of time before we see these smart sleep monitors sitting on the Boots shelf along with blood pressure monitors and finger pulse oximeters. And any digital medical device that keeps patients out of hospital has to be a good thing as it cuts time and costs.
In Norway, because of the vast number of remote islands, patients take control of their own health with preventive connected care, and as our health secretary Wes Streeting grapples with trying to save a creaking NHS, this sort of smart monitoring promises to be part of the cure.
