Nearly Half a Million Nights of Sleep Later, We’re Beginning to Understand What the Nervous System Has Been Trying to Tell Us
For most of my career, I’ve been asking a simple question:
Why is it so hard for so many people to sleep—even when they’re exhausted?
The traditional answer has been that insomnia is a problem of the brain. If you can’t sleep, we try to quiet the mind—with medications, supplements, meditation, behavioral therapy, or better sleep habits.
Many of these approaches help, and they remain important.
But after decades of caring for patients and studying the neuroscience of stress, I’ve come to believe we’ve been overlooking something fundamental.
Sometimes the brain isn’t keeping you awake. Sometimes the nervous system simply doesn’t believe it’s safe enough to let you sleep.
Today, I’m excited to share research that brings us one step closer to understanding that idea.
One of the Largest Real-World Sleep Studies Ever Conducted on a Wearable
Our newest peer-reviewed study analyzed 474,852 nights of sleep from 935 Apollo and Oura users over three years, making it one of the largest real-world studies of a wearable sleep intervention ever published.
The results were remarkable.
Among people who routinely slept fewer than six hours per night, using Apollo during sleep was associated with:
- An average of 46 additional minutes of sleep per night
- A 77% lower likelihood of sleeping less than six hours
- More REM sleep
These findings suggest that the people with the largest sleep deficit experienced the greatest benefit from Apollo.
Just as importantly, the data showed a clear dose-response relationship: the more Apollo was used during the night, the greater the improvement in sleep duration.
Why This Matters
46 minutes may not sound dramatic at first.
But if you’ve spent years waking up tired after sleeping only five or five-and-a-half hours, those extra minutes can mean the difference between surviving your day and feeling great for it. It also means an entire additional night of sleep added back to your week every week, which is life-changing.
Over time, that can translate into better emotional resilience, clearer thinking, steadier energy, and improved overall health.
As a physician, those are the outcomes I care about most.
A Different Way to Think About Sleep
For decades, we’ve approached insomnia primarily by trying to sedate the brain or asking people to work harder at sleeping.
Our findings suggest another possibility.
What if many people don’t need to be forced to sleep?
What if they simply need help shifting their bodies out of survival mode?
Apollo was designed around this idea. By delivering gentle, scientifically calibrated vibrations through the skin, Apollo communicates with sensory pathways connected to the autonomic nervous system—the network that regulates stress, recovery, heart rate, and sleep.
Rather than overriding the nervous system, the goal is to remind it that the environment is safe enough to rest.
When the body feels safe, sleep often follows naturally.
Pairing the Apollo Neuro wearable with OURA Ring validates its ability to improve sleep quality, as shown by Ragga Ragnars, Icelandic actress and former Olympic swimmer.
Why Real-World Data Matters
One of my favorite aspects of this study is that it didn’t happen inside a sleep laboratory.
These data came from people living their everyday lives.
Parents waking up with children.
Healthcare workers finishing late shifts.
Travelers crossing time zones.
Professionals managing demanding careers.
People recovering from illness.
In other words, these were real nights, in real homes, under real-world conditions.
That doesn’t replace randomized clinical trials—we continue to conduct those—but it tells us something equally important: whether an intervention works in everyday life.
Thank You
Most importantly, this research belongs to you.
Every person who chose to wear Apollo, every customer who shared their de-identified data for research, and every member of our community who believed there might be a better way helped make this study possible.
Science advances because people are willing to participate.
For that, I am deeply grateful.
We’re Just Getting Started
This study is another step toward a future where wearable technology doesn’t simply measure health—it actively helps improve it.
The same insights that came from this research helped us develop SmartVibes™, our AI-powered technology that can detect when your nervous system is drifting toward a nighttime awakening and automatically respond before you’re fully awake. In 2025, SmartVibes gave the world back over 144 million minutes (273 years) of sleep. It was not known that wearable technology could have this profound of an impact on public health until now.
I believe this is where medicine is headed: personalized, non-invasive technologies that work with the body’s own biology instead of against it.
We still have much to learn, and more clinical trials are underway.
But after nearly half a million nights of sleep, one thing is becoming increasingly clear:
The future of better sleep may not be about convincing the brain to shut down—it may be about helping the nervous system finally feel safe enough to let go.
Thank you for being part of this journey.
— David M. L. Rabin, MD, PhD
Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer
Apollo Neuroscience
The full manuscript is available through JMIR Publications:
JMIR Preprint: Association Between Duration of Transcutaneous Vibratory Stimulation Delivered by the Apollo Neuro Device and Extension of Total Sleep Time: https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/79588
