Activity trackers like the Fitbit have become an immensely popular as a way of staying in shape.

Many people try and achieve 10,000 daily steps, believing it to be the best way to keep fit.

But as well as counting your calories and tracking your heart rate, could your Fitbit help you sleep better?

The newest batches of the device have a sophisticated sleep tracking system that will keep a record of the sleep stages you cycle through at night. You'll also be able to see your sleep pattern and work out the time you spent awake, the time you spent restless and the time you spent asleep.

Holly Brockwell, 32 from Nottingham, is the founder of the tech site Gadgette and says that she never feels refreshed when she wakes up and is being investigated for sleep apnoea.

Speaking to FEMAIL, she discusses the sleep settings section of the Fitbit app and shares her thoughts on Sleep Stages, the apps daily chart of exactly how you slept last night.

Holly Brockwell, 32, says she never feel refreshed after sleeping and is using her Fitbit app to manage her sleep schedule

I often feel like I lost the genetic lottery. I have hypothyroidism, fibromyalgia, hypermobility, flat feet and kidney disease, I'm a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis and Tay-Sachs disease, and I'm currently being investigated for sleep apnoea.

If I have it, it'll explain why I've never felt refreshed when I wake up (I didn't realise anyone did), because I'll have been waking up multiple times every night not breathing.

While I wait for the brilliant but slow machinery of the NHS to figure out a diagnosis, I wondered if tech could help. Being a gadget blogger for my site Gadgette, I'd heard about the sophisticated sleep tracking on the newest generation of Fitbit devices, and decided to give it a try while I waited for my referral.

The founder of the tech site Gadgette says she may be suffering from sleep apnoea and so didn't want to wait for the NHS to diagnose her

Since the sleep tracking algorithm is a software update, it's available on a lot of the Fitbit devices, including some of the older ones.

I tried a Fitbit Charge 2, which is smaller and less feature-packed than the newer Versa smartwatch but still has the heart rate tracking needed for the sleep function. The limited-edition rose gold colourway wasn't strictly necessary, but it doesn't hurt to like the look of something you're going to be wearing every day.

One of the main questions I had going into the experiment was, how come I can sleep for ten, eleven, even twelve hours and still feel like I just came off a night shift? Is there any level of sleep that will make me feel OK?

She tested out the Fitbit's sleep tracking algorithm, since it is a software update making it available on many devices

The Fitbit uses Bluetooth to connect to a smartphone app (iOS and Android). While you can view basic info on the watch itself (including your heart rate and how many steps you've walked today), the app is where all the magic happens.

You can set targets for your steps and sleep, track your weight and food, even track periods and fertility windows. I was just there for the sleep tracking, though, and it turned out there were lots of options for that too.

In the sleep settings section of the Fitbit app, you can set a goal for the amount of time you'd like to be asleep every night, which is then displayed on the bar chart of your sleep for the week.

She uses the sleep settings section of the Fitbit app, where you can set a goal for the amount of time you'd like to be asleep every night

You can set a target bedtime and waking up time, even getting reminders to the wristband if you want them. But the best bit by far is Sleep Stages, the daily chart of exactly how you slept last night.

It's a little confusing at first, but once you've learnt what the different colours mean, you can read a Sleep Stages chart in seconds -- even when you're half-asleep. You can see exactly when you fell asleep, when you experienced light, deep and REM (dream sleep), and when you woke up.

You can see all the tiny moments of waking up during the night (this is normal, according to the help files), and in my case, much longer waking periods where it seems I was properly awake for a while in the middle of the night. This explains a lot.

One of the most useful functions of Sleep Stages for me is the benchmarking, where you can compare your stats for today and the last 30 days against people your age and gender. This is how I learnt that I usually don't get enough deep sleep, and that I spend more time awake than most women my age. Most nights, I can see multiple periods where I'm fully awake for a while -- which I don't remember at all -- before falling back to sleep.

Because of the device, she learned that she usually doesn't get enough deep sleep, and spends more time awake than most women her age

Of course, I can't tell from this data what's causing me to wake up so much and for so long. But having solid data to support what I've instinctively felt to be true -- that I must be getting very broken sleep -- is validating.

It's also useful for my upcoming sleep clinic referral: while I'll still need to have a monitored night of sleep in the clinic, it's enormously useful to have historical data of how I sleep normally, in my own bed, over time.

As wearable tech becomes more sophisticated, it's possible that it might actually be able to diagnose health conditions.

Whether people want their Fitbit to tell them that they might need treatment is debatable, but if it can give an early heads-up to go and chat to your doctor, that might save not just NHS time and resources -- but possibly even lives.

It's certainly saved me a lot of tossing and turning.