Sleep Tracker

[xactly]

Although the minor (5%) T (A) allele of the ADA gene is associated with more deep sleep, it has both positive and negative aspects and might be worth checking out when setting sleep goals...

People get less deep sleep as they age, decreasing from an average of 17% at age 20 to 12% at age 70...

This is fascinating. I started a sleep log to track results from my Whoop band, and there is a lot of variation between night-to-night sleep cycles. I have 20 nights of data so far, so I am starting to look at the averages instead of obsess about what happened the previous night.

My SWS so far is 15%, at the top of the reported Fitbit average, so deep sleep does not appear to be an issue as I originally thought. I checked my 23andme data, and I am heterozygous for the T allele on the rs73598374 SNP. Never knew about that one before! This clears up my question on whether I should stop drinking coffee. After watching Chris Masterjohn's Lite episode on coffee and the ADA gene, I'm going to drink more!

My REM sleep, on the other hand, seems lower than average. running about 14% with 20 days of tracking.

I'll do some more exploring and experimenting. Thanks for this info!

[apod]

I've been playing with this Oura ring for a little over a month now, and I've gotta say, the data you get out of this thing is way cool. I find the ring slightly-annoying to wear, but overall it's worth it.

This ring has my flipped my goals from getting activity in during the day to resting better overnight. A good night's rest seems to be followed by a good day's work, and vice versa. I've been following the gist of the "readiness" indicator, taking it easier on lower scoring days and pushing more on higher scoring days.

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You can really nerd out on the data in the Oura Cloud.

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Recently, I woke up with a scratchy throat, then turned on my phone to see that my ring had sent me a notification that my body temperature was trending higher during my sleep than usual, recommending that I should probably take it easy in case I was fighting the onset of a cold... a hint of future wearables tech to come!

On a recent podcast, the creator of the ring hinted at new features around the corner. I definitely recommend one of these if you're interested in tracking sleep.

[Chameleon]

I just started to use my Oura ring about 3 weeks ago. It definitely backs up what I had felt - in that I was waking too often and not getting enough deep and REM sleep. I didn't know abut the temperature part though. I will have to look into it.

[mike]

I'm having issues with very low time in deep sleeep. I'm wondering if it is my fitbit tracker or if I am in need of a more precise device. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

This may be obvious, but have you been tested for Sleep Apnea? A CPAP can do wonders for your sleep if you have it.

[Cat111]

I'm having issues with very low time in deep sleeep. I'm wondering if it is my fitbit tracker or if I am in need of a more precise device. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

This may be obvious, but have you been tested for Sleep Apnea? A CPAP can do wonders for your sleep if you have it.

Thank you Mike, Yes I was just tested...mild sleep apnea....looking for a CPAP machine, any suggestions?

[mike]

Thank you Mike, Yes I was just tested...mild sleep apnea....looking for a CPAP machine, any suggestions?

it depends on different factors. If it is mild, there are also mouth pieces that can adjust your jaw to allow better breathing. For the cpap, I've used resmed, but I just saw a new doctor who doesn't like that one... What is causing you to stop breathing? Is it physical blockage, or an error with the brain? That can determine what type you might need. If you are paying out of pocket, check out cpap.com.

[seaweed]

I have had some success with increasing my deep sleep.

I just received my Oura ring yesterday! I've been waiting since March, so I was so excited. I slept for 8 hr 26 min last night, but only got 39 minutes of deep sleep! What interventions have you tried to increase your deep sleep? I already stop eating well before bedtime, so I don't think that's an issue for me. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[NewRon]

A year or two ago, a doctor tested many of the wearables using them in a sleep lab. The most accurate was Basis (now bust) and Microsoft Band 2 (now discontinued). The others iirc were in no way representative of what was happening in sleep. As far as I recall, the worst offender was a Fitbit.

Here's is a reply I got recently, from the developer of the leading Android sleep tracker:

Sorry for the delay replying.
The REM indication is experimental and definitely it is only an estimate, regardless of the sensor used, be it accelerometer, sonar, smartwatch or Sleep Phaser. The method we use for sleep tracking - actigraphy is very limited in REM detection. It can be done but on a certain device with certain outputs. Also you need to assume you have an healthy sleep and healthy person. But we are working with very various devices. So please take REM as an very rough estimate which we would like to improve in the future, but it probably never will be exact with the technique we use for sleep tracking.
The REM is computed if there are data that fit into very specific boundaries, and missing REM isn't a fault of the sensor, but principial fault of actigraphy.

Regarding the wearable recommendation:
I think the wearable market is as a kind of a crisis at the moment. A year ago the option would be Pebble, which is now bought by FitBit. FitBit seems to be a good emerging platform with it's Ionic and Versa, but they are not cheap and we are only betatesting the integration with Sleep as Android now.

- Samunsg Gear and Wear OS are terrible at battery life so you need to charge the device nearly twice a day with sleep tracking every day
- Moreover Tizen (Gear) is developed by Samsung and thus it is extremely buggy and badly supported
- Garmin is expensive and there are bugs in the firmware so we cannot work reliably on all models.

- So what is left - the Mi Band - it is cheap, but our connection to it is reverse engineered (through the Tools & MI Band app). Xiaomi can decide any time to break all integrations with a firmware update which they already did few times. But with that price tag maybe this is not a huge risk.

So in fact I would recommend using Sonar - our contactless sleep tracking (if your phone supports it). Or look at our Sleep Phaser - sleep tracking smart light.

For sonar we use ultrasonic sleep tracking, the phone HW needs to support this. If it does you can keep it on the side table for a full featured seep tracking. On some devices this is sensitive enough to detect your respiration.

[SusanJ]

Don't know if anyone has seen this one, but I know there are several of you who use Oura rings.

The Sleep of the Ring: Comparison of the ŌURASleep TrackerAgainst Polysomnography (2018)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6095823/ (full text)

Summary variables for sleep onset latency (SOL), total sleep time (TST) and wake after sleep onset (WASO) were not different between ŌURA ring and PSG. PSG-ŌURA discrepancies for WASO were greater in participants with more PSG-defined WASO (p<.001). Compared with PSG, ŌURA ring underestimated PSG N3 (~20 min) and overestimated PSG REM (~17 min) (p<.05). PSG-ŌURA differences for TST and WASO lay within the ≤30 min a-priori-set clinically satisfactory ranges for 87.8% and 85.4% of the sample, respectively. From EBE analysis, ŌURA ring had a 96% sensitivity to detect sleep,and agreement of 65%, 51%, and 61%, in detecting “light sleep” (N1+N2), “deep sleep” (N3),and REM sleep, respectively. Specificity in detecting wake was 48%. Similarly to PSG-N3 (p<.001), “deep sleep” detected with the ŌURA ring was negatively correlated with advancing age (p=.001). ŌURA ring correctly categorized 90.9%, 81.3%, and 92.9% into PSG-defined TST ranges of <6h, 6–7h, >7h, respectively.

"N3" is deep sleep...

[frankiesfriend]

I bought an Oura ring about a month before the polysomnography (PSG) study I underwent about three months ago. The PSG indicated I had mild sleep apnea during REM sleep, and ZERO deep sleep. My sleep doctor recommended a CPAP but did not seem to care about the deep sleep. When I pressed for more information on this issue, she said that as we age, we get less deep sleep. OK, but zero? I remember hearing Matthew Walker state in an interview that getting a short night's sleep will rob one of REM sleep if awakened too early, and deep sleep if going to bed too late, relative to normal sleep times. So I am hoping that the PSG study - that started over an hour after my normal bed time - indicates only that I went to bed too late to capture deep sleep data.

The Oura ring shows deep sleep usually between 15 -20% of total sleep, and also REM usually between 15-20% of total sleep. Usually, but not always. Total sleep is anywhere between 5 - 7 hours, so actual minutes in deep sleep or REM sleep might be low if total sleep is low. I often wake up in the middle of the night and am awake for 2 hours during which I read. The Oura ring indicates that I am asleep during part of that period, so it can't be relied on if one is too still. But what the Oura ring is good at, I think, is showing what impact caffeine, alcohol, heavy meals (or too light meals) or supplements might have on sleep. I have almost given up drinking alcohol because it always affects my sleep...maybe not the total sleep, but definitely deep sleep and also heart rate variability.

I talked the sleep doctor into letting me do another sleep study, this one at home, which I will do in December, to see if that would better capture my sleep stages, and also to see if sleeping on my side - aided by pillows behind my back like I do now - will reduce the sleep apnea.