Health Tech

Sleep: The Final Frontier

Cove is a ‘Wearable’ Designed to Activate a Brain Pathway That Leads to Calmness

By Heather L. Sidorowicz

In America, 70 percent of adults report that they obtain insufficient sleep at least one night a month, and 11 percent report insufficient sleep every night. It is estimated that sleep-related problems affect 50 to 70 million Americans of all ages and socioeconomic classes. (sleephealth.org)

Sleep and I have never had a great relationship. I have tried every gimmick and recommendation out there. I do not drink caffeine after noon. I turn off all my screens an hour before bed and read after that to take my mind off of life. My schedule is consistent, often starting my bedtime routine by 9:30 pm. And, yet, I cannot tell you how often my kids and husband come to bed much later than I and are snoozing while I lay awake waiting for the sandman to bring me a damn dream.

This is what led me to Cove.

Cove is marketed as a “breakthrough wearable” that helps you sleep better and stress less, so your “body and mind can function at the highest level.”

Cove is a headband-like device that wraps around the back of your noggin and is held up by your ears. You are to wear it for 20 minutes, twice daily. The device vibrates behind your ears, which is said to activate a brain pathway that helps you feel calm and emotionally balanced. As it tends to be stress that keeps one awake, the device claims to help you sleep better.

How It Works in Theory

According to science, we all have a powerful system in our brains called the interoceptive pathway that monitors what is happening inside your body. When functioning smoothly, this pathway promotes feelings of relaxation. When it’s compromised, you may feel tired and stressed out. New evidence from neuroscience reveals that it is possible to active the interoceptive pathway through the skin and, in doing so, enhance wellbeing.

Cove calls this the sixth sense that you have never heard of. Just as we use our eyes and ears to detect what is happening in the outside world, we use a sense called interoception to keep tabs on what’s happening inside our bodies. Awareness of hunger, your heartbeat, or breathing patterns, for instance, are examples of interoception at work.

This magic pathway receives signals from all over your body – from your organs and extremities as it interacts with your brain’s memory centers and emotions. Mix this all up, and it equates to how you feel and act and your sense of wellbeing. So, if Cove activates this pathway, can it improve your wellbeing?

Using a technique called electroencephalography, scientists tracked brain activity during a 20-minute Cove session. They observed an increase in alpha in waves, a type of brain activity that often appears during meditation and indicates relaxation.

The App

Cove comes with a companion app that will track your progress. The app captures streaks, time of day, the total amount of sessions, and history. When I first started using the wearable, I found myself checking the app to see how much time I had left in the session. As I became more comfortable with wearing it while doing other things (watching TV, brushing my teeth, getting ready in the morning), I stopped relying on the app. If not used for a bit, the connection between the headset and app takes a minute to reconnect.

The Good and the Bad

Cove is not a magic pill, but overall, I do feel better, and better is a win. As I wanted to have a metric for this article, I did also end up purchasing a sleep tracking mat from Withings that works with their app called Health Mate. And after a few weeks, I can see my overall sleep score has improved. As far as I’m concerned, any improvement to sleep counts as a success.

This device is also said to have IFTTT integration for scenarios such as dimming lighting when you go to bed or turning up your thermostat when you get up. To date, I have not played with these features.

Despite my generally positive experience, I have not continued to use Cove on a regular basis. While the device is light, easy, and kind of amazing, the battery drains quickly. My experience yielded me one to two sessions before the battery died, and I often found it dying during a session. The charger uses a USB-C cord, and the extra step to make sure the unit was always charged is where I failed. Perhaps if they had simple wireless charging or found a way for the battery to last a week, I would have remained more consistent.

Cove costs $490 with free shipping, so it is not a purchase for the faint of heart. It comes with a 1-year warranty and a free 45-day return policy.

While you may not end up using these devices every day, they are something one could go back to during periods of high stress. And we all could use a bit less stress these days. My hope is that as devices like these catch on, we see the price point come down. Cove is not the only game in town, and with time and more studies, we may see this growing category of sleepassistance technology grow and improve. x