Sleep Data

[glatt]

I got a fitbit charge for Christmas.

It's a digital watch that also tracks your steps, your sleep, your elevation gain, acts as a silent vibrating alarm clock on your wrist, and gives caller id for your cell phone.

The most interesting thing to me is the sleep tracking feature. I've always felt like I slept poorly. I fall asleep easily but feel like I toss and turn all night. I'm constantly waking up, rolling over, and falling back asleep. Sometime my pillow case comes clean off by morning time because I'm moving around so much.

Now I have a couple weeks of data that confirm this feeling.

These are screenshots off my phone, which is bluetooth synched to my watch.

Total hours of sleep each night for a week. This actually looks pretty good. Could be much worse.


But when we look at how many time I wake up during the night or am restless, the picture becomes a little more grim.


Friday actually looks not so bad, but I gave the device to my wife to wear, so I could see what another person looks like as they sleep.

[glatt]

So let's look at a couple nights in a little closer detail.

Here's Wednesday night. I was wearing the watch.

My wife's alarm clock goes off at 5:53. She turns it off quickly and gets quietly out of bed. I'm usually not even aware of it, but you can see it caused me to roll over or something.

My alarm clock goes off at 6:07. And I hit snooze a couple of times before I get out of bed because I'm groggy as hell. Look how many times I woke up in the night! It's like that every night. I'm able to get right back to sleep again, but not that deep, because I'm tossing and turning just half an hour later each time.



Now look at my wife's sleep last night. It looks like she was tossing and turning at the end. But that was just her getting up and putting the watch on the dresser, where it thought the wearer was asleep again.





I have sleep envy. Look at all that beautiful vast ocean of blue.

[glatt]

Do you have one of these suckers? Post your data. I want to see how I compare.

[BigV]

Do you feel sufficiently rested after your sleep? Not just upon waking, but through the day.

[glatt]

How would I know?
I mean, I feel normal, but maybe my normal is another person's exhausted.

[footfootfoot]

What led me to having a sleep study done was having unplanned power naps at traffic lights, realizing I had no idea where I was headed in my car nor why I was there, not being able to do simple sums, and generally being exhausted to the point where if I sat down on the couch and read to my kids I'd fall asleep within a few words.

Despite being restless and awakening you seem to have long stretches of uninterrupted sleep, and that is what's important. My study showed something like the longest period of uninterrupted sleep being somehting like 20 mins and a total of 3 hours and change sleep in an 8 hour period.

I think I posted that info a few years ago. I'd love to get a watch like that to monitor my sleep to see if I can ween off the meds.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Awake for 3 minutes (3X)
Restless for 36 minutes (21X)
So you're taking restless, as rest less. What makes you think you're not getting the rest you should, because you're chasing rabbits in your sleep.

Not to make light of your concerns, but be careful of the TMI syndrome, where you have tons of data, too much data. Do you really know how to decipher it, or just massaging it to match your preconceived notions. Not being sure what it means just leads to overthinking it.

I tossed and turned all night, worrying about why I toss and turn all night.

[regular.joe]

I had a sleep study done just recently, and much to my surprise found that I quit breathing like 30 times an hour. No wonder I don't feel like I sleep well. I'm like you 3foot, I had to pull of the road and sleep, literally. My wife was would get worried.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Where did you have it done Joe? I had one done at a hospital some years back. They hooked me up to about a two inch bundle of wires, in a hospital bed, in a cold room, and told me they'd get information on how I normally sleep. Excuse me? This ain't how I normally sleep. I couldn't roll over with out feeling I was on a barbeque spit, and to get up to pee was a major operation of wire discombobulating. The whole thing was far from normal.

I went because my then girlfriend complained I'd stop breathing for what she felt was extended periods of time. When all was said and done they said I didn't have sleep apnea, but did have restless leg syndrome as my legs never stopped moving once I fell asleep. Hmm, I thought I was wearing out the sheets because I was a great lover.

[regular.joe]

I had it done at the Pine Hurst Pulmonary place. They had a nice set up. Yes all the cables, but a nice bed, lots of pillows, warm. It was pretty cool. Had to go twice, once for diagnoses and again to calibrate the machine they gave me.

Not to hijack the thread too much here. Glatt, it's damn cool that the technology exists to keep track of your life that much. I hear that keeping track of anything from calories to sleep is a key to making positive changes. If that is what we wish to do.

[Clodfobble]

As far as apnea goes, they have improved mightily on the options available since the first CPAP designs. My mom finally found success with this adjustable mouth guard that gradually increases over time until your jaw is held forward enough for you to breathe. Her director had her keep an oxygenation monitor on her finger to show that before the mouthguard she wasn't getting nearly enough, and after the mouthguard she was averaging like 96%.

[footfootfoot]

.joe, did you get a cpap machine?

[regular.joe]

Yea Foot, I did. We're still experimenting for efficacy, and type of machine. But, it does help. I started out at the TBI clinic, cause my world has been rocked a few times and my memory is for shit. I mean bad. But they tested me and said I'm fine. They suggested I look at my sleep.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Well get it all straightened out, you've got a whole world of physics to master.

[footfootfoot]

It's amazing how chronic sleep problems can fuck with you. throw stress into the mix and you've got not a ticking time bomb but a slow corrosion of a lot of organs. The more research you do on sleep the more something I can't remember.