How The Apple Watch Series 11 Helped Me Understand Sleep, Mindfulness During Ramadan

2026-03-10 04:17:25

(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Ramadan has a way of changing your routine. Your day may begin before sunrise with suhoor, stretch through long fasting hours, and may often end well past midnight after iftar. Some even end up staying awake till suhoor.

Here is when sleep shifts and routines you rely on for the rest of the year temporarily disappear.

Recommended For You UAE changes warning system, issues 'quieter' alerts amid regional attacks

This year, I spent the first half of Ramadan wearing the Apple Watch Series 11 almost constantly. I thought of it as a tech companion to track workouts or close activity rings, but, more importantly, to see what my body was actually going through during the month of fasting.

Fasting from dawn to sunset means your body runs on a very different rhythm. Some afternoons may feel sluggish, while other days you somehow remain productive despite having no food or water.

With the watch's continuous heart rate monitoring, it became easier to see when my body was under strain. While I didn't experience anything unusual with my heart rate, the watch has features to flag elevated heart-rate alerts or unusually high activity levels. Seeing those patterns can encourage you to slow down, hydrate better during non-fasting hours, and perhaps, plan things better.

What about sleep and mindfulness?

If there's one thing that truly changes during Ramadan, it's sleep.

Between waking up or not sleeping until suhoor, sleep becomes fragmented. The watch's sleep tracking made this visible in a way that felt almost confronting. Some nights showed barely four hours of uninterrupted sleep, broken into multiple segments. Other nights were surprisingly restorative, especially when I resisted the temptation to stay up scrolling on my phone. Seeing these patterns helped me make small adjustments.

I also experimented with the watch's mindfulness feature which occasionally nudged me to pause for a minute of breathing or reflection. They're short sessions - barely a minute - and building this habit was fun, to say the least. Those moments offered a small reset between daily tasks and the anticipation of iftar.

Learning from the data

The real value of wearing a device like the Series 11, or any health tracker for that matter, during Ramadan wasn't the notifications themselves, but the patterns that appeared over time.

Your heart rate trends show when you push too hard while fasting. My sleep tracking revealed how late nights affected the next day's energy. Even simple metrics like daily activity painted a picture of how my routine had shifted compared to a normal month.

None of this data feels overwhelming. Instead, it served as a gentle reminder that our bodies respond in measurable ways to the lifestyle changes Ramadan brings.

And while technology isn't here to replace your core values this Ramadan, it does act like a tool to help us, if used right, in becoming more aware of our bodies and habits. I am not talking about dramatic transformations or overnight health improvements, but small and useful insights that present a clear picture of how sleep and daily habits play a role in my lifestyle during a temporary change. And sometimes, simply understanding those patterns is the first step toward taking better care of yourself.