About the ASP
On this page you find answers to:
What is the ASP?
The ASP online platform is a unique professional sleep performance profiling tool provided by the Institute for Human Biology, Canada. It is a practical application of the natural life science Biology (i.e., Human Biology, Ethology, Behavioural Science).
It is primarily designed to serve sleep-educated coaches, trainers, health professionals, etc., who assist others to improve their wellbeing and awake performance, and who understand what crucial role an adequate daily self-restoration (adequate sleeping) plays in this respect.
The tool may also serve as a guideline for a competent sleep education to illustrate the biological effects specific environmental, lifestyle, and behavioural factors have on sleeping.
The ASP Profile is no medical diagnose and must not be abused as such. The goal is to identify and quantify individual sleep impacting causes so that they can be improved effectively. Being a professional tool that requires a basic functional understanding of sleeping, access to it is not public (login required) and conditions apply.
For detailed information about the ASP and the functional Biology of the vital biological activity sleeping in general please contact the
Why profiling sleep performance?
Sleep is not a thing. Sleeping is a complex vital activity, something we must individually do. Sleeping is a biological performance with the biological purpose of autonomously self-restoring the organism from its preceding daily awake depletion, to regenerate, grow, and heal (all of which we physiologically cannot perform while awake).
Like any other performance, sleeping cannot become diseased or "disordered", hence, principally cannot be medically treated. If we are to improve sleeping effectively, we need a rational functional understanding of the performance sleeping, which fundamentally differs from a medical approach. We can't simply wait till symptoms show, since inaccurate sleeping has no specific symptoms.
We need to rationally understand and assess individual environmental and behavioural (lifestyle) causes, which non-negotiably and cumulatively hamper a (naturally always optimal) sleep performance, hence, must result in a biologically insufficient daily self-restoration.
To identify and evaluate such individual causes, we have created the so-far unique and pioneering biological sleep performance assessment tool ASP.
How do we profile sleep performance?
By applying a functional understanding of human anatomy, physiology, and the human Biotope (Human Biology), we understand a biologically optimal daily human sleep performance under functionally optimal environmental conditions with a biologically optimal lifestyle, which allows a human organism daily to self-restore fully from the previous awake period with optimal efficiency in shortest possible time.
This biologically best possible restorative sleep performance of a human organism is the target reference of the ASP sleep profile – the performance goal to reach.
The ASP evaluates major personal environmental and lifestyle factors, which – if less than biologically optimal – cumulatively and non-negotiably reduce daily personal sleep performance and increase a personal sleep requirement
Comparing an actual individual sleep performance under actual individual conditions to the biological daily minimum sleep performance required of a healthy human organism of the same age and gender under optimal conditions results in a detailed individual biological sleep performance profile.
The profile reveals an eventual self-restoration deficit and its functional environmental and lifestyle causes, so that an insufficient individual daily sleep performance can be improved effectively when awake.
What does the ASP sleep assessment do?
By means of a personalised online multiple-choice questionnaire, which is accessible online from a secure personal ASP account only, the ASP platform collects personal sleep-relevant living environment and lifestyle information.
It takes about 10 to 15 min. to complete the online questionnaire.
Upon completion of the questionnaire, the ASP platform instantly generates the detailed personal SPP Sleep Performance Profile report with 26 major quantified sleep-impacting causes and an eventual daily sleep deprivation (in % of the individual minimum sleep requirement and in approximate hrs. and min.).
The SPP report is auto-saved and stored on the respective personal ASP online account, where it is instantly accessible by both, the profilee and the responsible ASP supervisor (exclusively) and where it can be revisited anytime later.
Both, a personal ASP account and the individual SPP report(s) it securely stores, are strictly confidential and data-protected.
What is the benefit of a personal sleep performance profile?
Sleeping is a vital individual performance that cannot be medically treated. Further, sleeping is mandatory a non-conscious performance. We obviously cannot deliberately improve sleeping while doing it.
However, we can improve our sleeping proactively while being awake by ensuring a sleep-friendly environment and a sleep-friendly awake lifestyle. To achieve this, we need to know what to improve.
The profile shows what exactly to improve personally. The SPP report is designed to provide the required information in a quantified and prioritised way. It is a detailed, scientific, practical, and personalised biological Sleep Hygiene Guide.
Reducing even only a few of the biological sleep hygiene penalties revealed by an SPP report will already lead lastingly to a respectively better personal daily sleep performance (self-restoration) – granted by the Laws of Nature.
The invaluable benefit of the SPP sleep profile report – if consequently considered – is that it is a fundamentally practical Life Skill Guide to a generally better personal physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing resulting in a better systemic Quality of Life in all its aspects – including of course a generally better physical, emotional, intellectual, and social performance when awake.
Important Note:
An insufficient sleep performance is a severe form of biological self-neglect …
The SPP shows in great detail what to improve. However, the SPP cannot do it for you. Improving your sleep performance successfully may require you to change some deeply rooted inaccurate habits (e.g. a cellphone addiction) and unfavourable learned values, conventions, and priorities.
This is why we have designed the tool to be in the competent hands of a sleep-educated coach who – based on your personal SPP sleep performance profile – can show you easy and efficient ways to improve your personal sleep-essential habits, assists you not to relapse and to keep practicing a new sleep-friendlier lifestyle until it has become habitual.
The history of the ASP
1980s
The foundation of what has become today’s sophisticated ASP sleep assessment tool was laid in the early 1980s. It was a project of the Human Factors Commission of Swissair, the former national airline of Switzerland. Air accident investigations globally started to reveal to what striking degree pilot fatigue and chronic jet-lag contribute to most air accidents. In aviation, a pilot’s inaccurate sleeping is evidently a serious issue that can quickly become deadly for many ...
The goal of the commission was (among other) to find ways to prevent sleep deprivation by advising flight crew members how to self-restore optimally between flight duty, particularly also under extreme conditions (irregular duty hours, sleeping in hotels, in different countries and time zones) and to advise the airline regarding minimum time required between flight duties to allow a biologically sufficient self-restoration of their crews.
Inaccurate sleeping (sleep deprivation) has no specific symptoms. Once fatigue can be medically diagnosed, it is obviously much too late to prevent it. Further, medically diagnosing each crew member prior to each flight is not a feasible option. It became clear, that a medical approach to our goal was not useful.
To fulfill our task, we needed reliable information about a biologically optimal human sleep performance under biologically optimal conditions, to which we then could compare an actual sleep performance under actual conditions.
Creating a scientific understanding of sleeping:
To our great astonishment, we could not find any scientific information about optimal human sleeping (apart from often-conflicting medical musing about sleep duration). To acquire a reliable scientific reference, we had no option but to launch our own pioneering scientific studies of sleeping as the vital daily biological self-restoration performance (Human Biology).
Simultaneously, we developed a paper-questionnaire to collect actual sleep-relevant information of individual flight crew members. By comparing the collected actual sleep information to our scientific findings about biologically optimal sleeping we could detect eventual self-restoration deficits and identify their causes. The ASP tool – short for "Assessing Sleep Performance" – was born.
1985
After two years of pioneering biological sleep studies (funded by Swissair) and collecting actual individual sleep information, in 1985 we delivered our first consolidated scientific recommendations to the airline’s flight crew training and flight crew dispatching departments, a first and ongoing practical application of the ASP.
With the first portable computers (laptops), the first relational databank software for PCs became available in the mid 1980s. This allowed us to create an electronic ASP software platform with an integrated questionnaire that delivered instantaneous sleep profile reports – an enormous leap towards efficiency and practical usefulness of the ASP tool, which previously had required hours to produce one single sleep profile report manually.
1990s
Following management changes in the early 1990s (which lead to the airline’s dramatic bankruptcy in 2001), the airline’s Human Factors Commission was dissolved in 1992. After 7 years in service, the meanwhile substantially more sophisticated ASP was no longer engaged internally.
However, inaccurate sleeping affects not only flight crews. It evidently affects every human in every walk of life non-negotiably, irrespective of professional activities. Consequently, in 1993, we decided to continue our studies and to keep evolving the ASP platform independently. The ASP served us as a scientific research tool and we increasingly applied it to provide practical sleep education, coaching, and counselling.
2005
Having acquired an enormous amount of scientific insight about the functional biology of sleeping in the preceding 20 years, which was continuously integrated in an ever more sophisticated ASP, in 2005 we began to cooperate with selected professionals in order to explore the practical usefulness of the ASP in a wider professional context. Based on their valuable feedbacks, we enhanced the ASP ergonomically to make it optimally useful as a client assessment tool in professional domains such as health, wellbeing, education, accident prevention, awake performance, etc.
Yet, the professional use of the ASP required installation of our databank software on individual computers. This technically restricted its availability.
2012 till present:
Strongly encouraged by professional users, we created a direct online access to our ASP platform in 2012, which no longer requires installing any software. Since then, the ASP has been employed by accredited professionals and their clients on four continents directly via our login-gate website https://sleep-assessment.com (which you are visiting here).
As we continuously keep acquiring more scientific insight about the Functional Biology of sleeping, we keep evolving and refining the ASP respectively. Our current most advanced ASP version has been accessible online since June 2022.
Side note:
To our knowledge, the ASP presently remains the only rational scientific sleep-assessment tool, which considers sleeping as a vital biological performance, and which references actual individual sleeping to biologically optimal sleeping of a human organism under biologically optimal conditions.
Contrary to rather unsuccessful attempts to repair sleep (e.g., medical, pharmacological) – for four decades, our functional biological understanding of sleeping has consistently proven to assist improving individual sleep performance reliably and substantially, resulting in lastingly enhanced and consolidated individual physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing as well as a globally improved awake performance.
Creator and responsible scientific supervisor of the ASP:
Martin H. Gremlich Phil.II, Sc.Nat., ATP – human biologist, founder and executive chief scientist of the Institute for Human Biology, former airline captain.
Editorial
The website sleep-assessment.com serves as the public online gate, which connects to the login of the ASP sleep performance profiling tool. The website sleep-assessment.com and the ASP online platform it links to are propriety of the IHB – Institute for Human Biology.
IHB web editor: Martin H. Gremlich
© 2022 IHB – Institute for Human Biology
Any copying, extracting, or reproducing of content of this website, even only partial, in any form or by any method, requires the previous written consent of the copyright owner.
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