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????Jawbone推出UP手環已經快一年了。UP是一款腕帶式電腦，能夠追蹤用戶的動作，主要是用戶走了多少步路、睡了幾個小時。事實上，UP手環首次推出已經是在兩年前，只不過它在2011年出現了大范圍的質量問題，導致Jawbone公司公開道歉，并將該產品下架。

????上周，Jawbone發布了升級版的UP手環以及配套的智能手機應用UP24（意即24小時全天候）。從前，如果用戶想要查看自己走了多少步路或者睡了幾個小時，需要將手環插入智能手機的耳機插孔。而現在，升級版的UP手環有藍牙連接，能將數據更新發送到正在手機上運行的應用程序。這個應用還能向用戶推送提示信息，督促用戶在24小時內多走幾步路或者早點兒上床睡覺，以幫助用戶實現日常的健康目標。UP系統將該目標默認為每天行走一萬步、休息八小時。

????雖然我向來對所謂的健康管理產品持懷疑態度，而且我認為那些會花150美元購買手環改善自身健康的人完全不需要我們的醫保體系操心，但是我還是斷斷續續的用了快一年的UP手環，而且感覺還不錯。UP手環不引人注目，而且我基本不會想到它在追蹤我的運動，這一點我很喜歡。另外一點讓我滿意的是，它很少會干擾我，除非我坐得太久（該時間段可以自行調節，我設定的是一小時），那么它會發出震動提醒；另外，每天早上，它會震動叫醒我起床。其它的通知和更新也都不引人注目，我已經關閉了幾乎所有的推送通知。而且一般情況下，我基本每天都會登錄一下該應用。有時候不登錄，那也沒什么大不了。

????我絕對算不上模范用戶，但這也沒關系。UP手環能讓我大致掌握了兩項非常重要的數據：步行里程和睡眠情況。作為一個紐約人，每天完成1萬步的目標輕而易舉。我每天通勤要走大約6千步，中午或者下班后，再步行20分鐘去吃飯。如此算來，1萬步基本就夠了。不過我的睡眠則一塌糊涂。說真的，在佩戴UP手環之前，我根本不知道自己的睡眠質量有多糟糕。

????像我這樣情況的人很多。絕大部分人都不知道自己的睡眠時間到底有多長（確切點說，是有多短）。哈佛醫學院睡眠醫療中心（the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School）執行董事拉塞爾?桑娜說：“大部分人對睡眠知之甚少。我們如今的社會是24小時全天無休，說到基本的健康知識，大部分人對睡眠健康根本一無所知，因為他們的醫生就對此毫無了解。”

????如今人們的睡眠情況同以前大不一樣。我們如今有各種藥物幫助人們保持清醒（而且這樣的藥物越來越多）；而且，如今的文化是，只休息三四個小時就去上班的人被視為英雄。而實際上，這種人應該被看成喝醉了酒之后去上班。桑娜說：“如果人不眠不休工作18到24小時，認知能力與血液中酒精含量為10%的時候相當。從法律角度而言，血液中酒精含量達到8%就意味著醉酒。”他補充道，睡眠至關重要，影響到我們總體的健康狀況。從這個意義上來說，UP手環等設備的重要性不言而喻，因為“它們使睡眠成為我們剛剛開始探討的整體健康問題的一部分。”

????It's been almost a year to the day since Jawbone released the UP, a wristband computer that tracks motion -- the number of steps you take and the hours you sleep, mostly. Actually, it's been two years since the UP was first introduced, but in 2011 many of the bands failed, and the company apologized and pulled the product.

????Last week, Jawbone released an update to both the band and its smartphone application which it's calling UP24 -- as in, 24 hours a day. Before, if you wanted to see how much you were walking or sleeping, you had to plug the wristband into the headphone jack on your smartphone. The band now has bluetooth, so it can send updates to the application running on your phone. And the app can send you push notifications that might prod you throughout those 24 hours to walk a little more or get to bed a little earlier, so you reach your daily health goals, which on the UP system default to walking 10,000 steps and sleeping for eight hours every day.

????Despite my general skepticism toward products that make a game out of healthy living, and my sense that the people who purchase, and whose health is improved by, a $150 wristband are theleast of our health care system's worries, I've been using the UP off and on for a year now, and I like it. I like how unobtrusive it is, and how little I think about the fact that this thing on my wrist is tracking my movement. I like the few interruptions it causes in my day: vibrating angrily if I've been sitting for too long (an hour, in my case, but that's adjustable) and vibrating me awake in the mornings. The additional notifications, with the update, are unobtrusive too -- I've turned off pretty much all the push notifications and during my normal weekly routine I check in with the app maybe once a day. Maybe not. It's no big deal.

????I'm a pretty bad user, but that's fine. The UP gives me a very rough sense of two rather important data points: walking and sleeping. As a New Yorker, hitting the 10,000-steps-a-day goal is fairly easy. My commute accounts for roughly 6,000 of those steps. Add in a 20 minute walk to lunch or after work, and I'm basically there. My sleep, on the other hand, is a mess. I honestly had no idea just how bad it was until I began wearing the UP.

????I'm far from alone. Most people have no idea how much (or more accurately: how little) sleep they get. Russell Sanna, the executive director of the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School told me that there is just "a huge amount of illiteracy around sleep. We're a 24 hour society now, and since your doctor didn't learn about sleep health, you didn't either, when you were learning about basic health."

????We don't sleep like we used to, we have more drugs to keep us awake than ever before (and still more coming), and culturally, working after just three or four hours of rest is viewed as heroic, when really it should be viewed more like showing up to work drunk. "When you're sleep-deprived, within 18 to 24 hours, your cognitive performance is equivalent to 0.1 alcohol in your blood -- 0.08 is legally drunk," says Sanna. Sleep, he adds, is a "gateway issue" -- it affects so much of our overall health that devices like the UP are incredibly important because "they make sleep part of a conversation we're only just starting to have."