Sleep monitor

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stjohnh
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Location: Palo Alto, California

Sleep monitor

Post by stjohnh »

Has anyone had experience with sleep monitors (Zeo, Fitbit, Sense, etc.)? I have a lot of trouble figuring out how much I really sleep and was wondering of these devices can help me fine-tune my medication use. I just ordered the Sense
https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Sleep-Pill ... ep+tracker
Also V.one wrist monitor
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01H0 ... s_bw_c_x_1
Blessings,
Holland

Rustsmith
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Re: Sleep monitor

Post by Rustsmith »

No personal experience with any of these products. I tried a sleep app for my phone a few years ago that was supposed to use the accelerometer in the phone to detect movement, sort of like the Sense Pill. It wasn't very effective, possibly because we had an Sleep Number bed at the time that was pressurized to be pretty hard. That meant that the mattress did not move very much and so the vibrations were probably below the detection limit for the phone. Maybe it would have worked better with a different mattress.

When I was first diagnosed there was quite a bit of very positive information about the Zeo. From what I have seen, that is the only end-user piece of equipment that would truly detect when you were asleep vs not moving. Unfortunately, they had already gone out of business and I didn't want to pay the asking price for the limited number of used Zeo's listed by individuals on Ebay that might or might not still be working.
Steve

https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/a ... 0/fulltext
Opinions presented by Discussion Board Moderators are personal in nature and do not, in any way, represent the opinion of the RLS Foundation, and are not medical advice.

Polar Bear
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Re: Sleep monitor

Post by Polar Bear »

My husband has had a Fitbit for two months. I've just asked him about the sleep recording and his opinion is that although excellent, it's not truly accurate in that if he is lying quietly reading the Fitbit assumes this is sleep.

As it is clipped to the pillow, I wonder what the Sleep Pill records if an insomniac like me is up out of bed for over an hour. Or does it start over again when the user returns to bed.

The wrist monitor is much cheaper than the Fitbit.

Please keep us updated on your opinion of these two items, I am interested in what you think of the wrist monitor.
Betty
https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/a ... 0/fulltext
Opinions presented by Discussion Board Moderators are personal in nature and do not, in any way, represent the opinion of the RLS Foundation

ViewsAskew
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Re: Sleep monitor

Post by ViewsAskew »

Beth has used something in the past. So have a few other members. For anyone looking for other people's results, a search might provide more info.
Ann - Take what you need, leave the rest

Managing Your RLS

Opinions presented by Discussion Board Moderators are personal in nature and do not, in any way, represent the opinion of the RLS Foundation, and are not medical advice.

stjohnh
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Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2016 3:13 pm
Location: Palo Alto, California

Re: Sleep monitor

Post by stjohnh »

I tried search, only came up w few old posts on the Zeo.
Blessings,
Holland

ViewsAskew
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Re: Sleep monitor

Post by ViewsAskew »

That's possible - most of these were several years ago and Fitbit and others weren't big, yet. I seem to recall a couple people using other things more recently, but could be misremembering.
Ann - Take what you need, leave the rest

Managing Your RLS

Opinions presented by Discussion Board Moderators are personal in nature and do not, in any way, represent the opinion of the RLS Foundation, and are not medical advice.

stjohnh
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Location: Palo Alto, California

Re: Sleep monitor

Post by stjohnh »

Well, I'm sending back the Hello Sense sleep tracker. Good reviews on amazon made it seem like a good bet. Three problems: 1. inaccurrate deep sleep reporting that jumps wildly from night to night, 2. adds more deep sleep time even after I'm clearly up, out of bed and moving around. 3. App graph hard to use.

I'm close to giving up on the sleep cycle apps that rely on my phone's accelerometer with phone lying on the bed at night. Basic problem is that for night to night comparisons the phone needs to be placed in exactly the same place on the bed and I have to remain close to phone all-night or it doesn't register movements consistently.

All these monitors rely on some way of measuring how much I move at night. Since body movements are minimal with both N3 deep sleep and REM sleep, all these monitors combine N3+REM and report this as "deep" sleep.

I'm testing two wrist monitors (similar to Fitbit) and initial testing shows better correlation of time of deep sleep with how I feel the next day than either Sense monitor or phone app monitors.
Blessings,
Holland

Polar Bear
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Re: Sleep monitor

Post by Polar Bear »

Thanks for your Reviews, it takes some of the 'leg work' out of it for others who may be interested.
Betty
https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/a ... 0/fulltext
Opinions presented by Discussion Board Moderators are personal in nature and do not, in any way, represent the opinion of the RLS Foundation

Rustsmith
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Re: Sleep monitor

Post by Rustsmith »

For those interested, just came across this article http://dreamstudies.org/2013/07/16/best-sleep-tracking-apps-devices/

The Melon device looks very interesting if they can bring it to market since it is the first thing since the Zeo that is based on EEG and not movement.
Steve

https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/a ... 0/fulltext
Opinions presented by Discussion Board Moderators are personal in nature and do not, in any way, represent the opinion of the RLS Foundation, and are not medical advice.

stjohnh
Posts: 1284
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2016 3:13 pm
Location: Palo Alto, California

Re: Sleep monitor

Post by stjohnh »

Well, most of the sleep tracker apps actually don't work very well. After 10 days or so of trying different sleep tracking apps I have found that their measurement of deep sleep is extremely inaccurate, and don't correlate well with each other nor how I feel during the daytime. There is fairly good research showing that slow steady heart rates during sleep are fairly well correlated with deep sleep. For reasons that are unclear to me, the sleep apps don't integrate heart rate data with arm movement or body movement data. I get a better correlation with how I feel if I combine low heart rate with the Deep Sleep (no movement) data and use only the times in which my heart rate is slow AND the app shows that I am in deep sleep. I am still testing but it is possible that using low heart rate data alone is even better. I am unimpressed with the current state of consumer sleep analysis apps and bracelets. They are not even very good at telling awake from asleep, much less how much time is spent in deep sleep.
Blessings,
Holland

ViewsAskew
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Re: Sleep monitor

Post by ViewsAskew »

Thanks for all the info, Holland. I've hesitated to buy one or use an app because I wasn't convinced they would be helpful. Now I know not to bother.
Ann - Take what you need, leave the rest

Managing Your RLS

Opinions presented by Discussion Board Moderators are personal in nature and do not, in any way, represent the opinion of the RLS Foundation, and are not medical advice.

Polar Bear
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Re: Sleep monitor

Post by Polar Bear »

Holland, thanks. This is much the same as my husband is finding with his Fitbit.
Betty
https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/a ... 0/fulltext
Opinions presented by Discussion Board Moderators are personal in nature and do not, in any way, represent the opinion of the RLS Foundation

stjohnh
Posts: 1284
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2016 3:13 pm
Location: Palo Alto, California

Re: Sleep monitor

Post by stjohnh »

Well, after two more weeks of experimenting with various sleep tracker apps, I'm near to actually starting to use the data to help evaluate my sleeping in relation to medication dosing.

I have used a bunch of the Sleep apps, using either their determination of deep sleep or correlating it with heart rate data from my V fit bracelet. All are worse than just using the periods of low heart rate that I have every night as a proxy for deep sleep. I also got a Polar chest strap to use for a more accurate ECG reading of my heart rate and heart rate variability. Heart rate variability adds a little bit to the analysis, but really it's not very much and using a chest strap at night is considerably more involved than just putting on my bracelet. The optical heart rate determination that my bracelet uses matches pretty well with the ECG heart rate determination from the Polar chest strap.

I've also found that my sleeping patterns are unpredictable on a day-by-day basis, so I think I'll have to go a week at a time for each drug trial, adding up the total amount of deep sleep in a week for a comparison.

Bottom line, if any of you want to try to evaluate how much deep sleep time you have, my experience is that a simple heart rate bracelet and using spells of steady low heart rate are a better proxy for deep sleep than any of the sleep apps that I've tried. The bracelet I'm using was $30 on Amazon.

Oh, the app that comes closest to matching how I feel with its determination of deep sleep time is Sleep Time by Azunio, available for iPhone or android. But still not as good as just using time of slow steady heart rate.
Blessings,
Holland

stjohnh
Posts: 1284
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2016 3:13 pm
Location: Palo Alto, California

Re: Sleep monitor

Post by stjohnh »

Here are some observations on my sleeping patterns.
Most nights I have three sleep cycles or less. Normal is four or five 90-minute cycles. Normal pattern is for the first deep sleep period to be the longest of the night and subsequent deep sleep periods shorter. I never have that pattern. A normal adult should get approximately 20% of their sleeping time as deep sleep, in other words, 1.6 hours per night. Using my low heart rate proxy for deep sleep, I get more than that on most nights, so using a low heart rate probably overstates the amount of time I get in deep sleep, but since it seems to be the best proxy it seems to overstate proportionately. On average I will have two bad nights with low amounts of low heart rate time followed by a night of either better or much better low heart rate time. The good nights typically have two cycles of much longer than average low heart rate, 1.5-2.5 hours. The bad nights I typically have four or five 15-minute spells of low heart rate (i.e. very fragmented sleep).

I didn't used to know how complicated sleep was, nor how bad one feels after lots of nights of poor sleep.
Blessings,
Holland

badnights
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Re: Sleep monitor

Post by badnights »

I didn't used to know how complicated sleep was, nor how bad one feels after lots of nights of poor sleep.
In our society we have a bad habit of underestimating the impact of poor sleep. The guy who owns the gym I go to is very fitness- and nutrition-conscious. I would back-squat 5 reps at a certain weight but then 2 weeks later I couldn't sqaut even one rep at 80% of that weight. I had been sleeping really poorly. He tried to explain it for me by referring to what I had eaten or random variations; but then he had his first kid.

After a few weeks with less sleep than normal after his baby was born, he was talking amazed about how much his strength had suffered. Well. I had to say "I told you so".

I also notice that my muscles get really sore and take a long time to recover when I'm sleeping less than usual. (My usual is pretty bad, so maybe you have to be really sleep-deprived to notice this.)
Beth - Wishing you a restful sleep tonight
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