5/29/2023 0 Comments Iwatch sleep tracker![]() ![]() Apple did not immediately have a comment.ĭr. “I tell them to go back to sleep.”įitbit said in a statement that it took accuracy very seriously and that its team continuously studied and tested the accuracy of its products. “I’ve had plenty of customers say this has changed their life, but I get other people saying they’re waking up in the middle of the night and checking their sleep,” he said. Walsh, the developer of AutoSleep, said people should use his app to look at trends, not to obsess over the daily data. He suggested that people experimenting with sleep trackers look at weekly trends, not daily summaries. One big problem, he said, is that many of these tracking apps send daily notifications with users’ sleep statistics. “The question is can you do anything on your own to optimize it? Or is the information just worthless or is it making things worse? Sometimes being aware of it just makes you even more anxious.”ĭr. “There’s no program - it’s just information,” Dr. He said that while the device most likely had a rough sense of when he was sleeping and awake, he didn’t know whether the information about sleep stages was accurate - let alone what to do with it. The ring measures motion and heart rate to present granular data about the different sleep stages. Ethan Weiss, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, has been wearing a ring on his finger called Oura Ring, which includes a sleep tracker, for nearly a year. (Duh.) Buried deep inside the data was some general information about sleep, but the app stopped short of offering advice on how to solve my personal sleep problems.ĭr. My sleep-tracking statistics said I needed more sleep. O.K., but what happens once you collect your sleep data from a tracker or an app? There is no real answer. He added that the devices enabled some sleep tracking to be done in the real world, not a lab. Michael Grandner, director of the University of Arizona’s sleep research program, who has consulted for Fitbit, said that wrist-worn sleep trackers had a long history of use in scientific research and that some devices could be very accurate at measuring sleep stages. Some scientists said consumer-grade sleep trackers should not be dismissed as inaccurate. In contrast, the algorithms used by university sleep labs have been publicly shared for decades. David Walsh, the computer scientist who developed AutoSleep, said he knew the movement and heart rate sensors would not accurately estimate the REM stage, so he didn’t bother.Īnother unknown for sleep trackers are the algorithms that are being used to measure people’s sleep, Dr. Here is where the AutoSleep app gets credit: It estimates sleep duration and deep sleep using the motion and heart rate sensors, but it does not attempt to guess REM sleep. Without a good look at REM sleep, those apps may give an incomplete picture of sleep quality. In sleep-tracking labs, the gold-standard scientific equipment typically includes sensors that are connected to someone’s face and neck to measure eye and brain activity, among other variables.īut sleep-tracking apps for wearable devices like the Apple Watch or Fitbit primarily look at movement and heart rate to determine when you are asleep or awake - which are generally not precise enough to measure the different sleep stages, Dr. That’s partly because the cycles are not the same throughout the night: The early cycles have more deep sleep, whereas the later ones have more REM sleep.īut our sleep-tracking tech? It generally can’t accurately measure REM sleep. To get a good night’s sleep, you need to complete four or five cycles. On average, a person completes a sleep cycle, which includes each of the three main stages, every 90 minutes. REM sleep, the stage in which we dream, helps in repairing our psychological and emotional networks. The deep sleep stage is beneficial for physical restoration, like muscle reparation and metabolism recovery, researchers said. There are three main stages: Light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep (for rapid eye movement). To understand sleep-tracking data, I delved into how sleep works. Here’s what I learned after two weeks of sleep tracking. “You may think: ‘Oh, gosh, I didn’t sleep well. “If you look at your data, it can modify the perception of your sleep,” he said. His most important advice: Do not check your sleep data on a regular basis. For some practical tips on how to get more shut-eye, I sought out Raphael Vallat, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. ![]()
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