[...] The SRI researchers studied 41 healthy adolescents and young adults (average age 17). Sleep data were recorded using the Oura ring and standard PSG on a single laboratory overnight. Metrics were compared using Bland-Altman plots and epoch-by-epoch analysis.
The ring accurately detected "light" and "deep" sleep in 65% and 51% of the sleep epochs, respectively. It also accurately detected 61% of REM sleep epochs, with an overall overestimation of PSG REM sleep (by about 17 min). When the ring misclassified PSG REM sleep, the algorithm usually classified the epoch as "light sleep" (76%).
These data suggest that the Oura Ring is virtually useless in telling you if you are in REM sleep versus deep or light sleep. [...]
Matthew Walker, probably the best known sleep scientist, has been critical of Oura and pretty much all the sleep trackers for sleep phase data. Unsurprisingly, it's difficult to guess at brain EM wave patterns from a band on the finger, wrist, etc.
I'm 6 months on Oura, and I don't think it's actually that consistent, i.e. I don't think you can say "Oura shows 50% more deep sleep today, so even if the base mumber is wrong, I must have gotten 50% more deep sleep". I wear a fitbit to cross validate each night, and the readings on both often contradict each other seemingly arbitrarily, night to night.
Overall I've found they're great for tracking overall sleep time (HRV, heart rate, temp too) but I don't read too much into the actual sleep phase data. (Day-to-day self asessment of cognitive performance is probably the best proxy.)
I have a cheap Mi Band 2 and I'm impressed with how well it measures when I'm sleeping and when I'm awake. I don't know how good it is to measure deep sleep. I does not pretend to measure REM.
Are there any weareable device that measures it well?
I was using a Fitbit Charge (the one before the just released one). One night I was awake looking at my phone from 1-3am and it said I was asleep. Took it off and put it into a drawer right then.
Tbh the oura ring has been a game changer for a data nerd like me. I can easily see how some exercise in the day actually impacts my HRV[1] and then the quality of my sleep. Had a heavy night of drinking? Watch what the oura ring reports not just on the same night but even the next night :) Basically if you're thinking of starting your own "protocol" for sleep and would like to A/B test what works and what seems like superfluous ceremony, the oura ring is a cost-effective way to measure the effectiveness of said protocol.
I think the protocol described in the article isn't anything terribly new. Most folks on HN know that blue light actually messes with sleep so if you're planning on using a screen until right before you goto bed it's a great idea to use the blue-light canceling computer glasses. Mindfulness meditation is generally a great practice to calm oneself and be reflective. I don't personally sleep at 8:45pm (rather, 11:45pm) but I do have my meal a few hours before I goto bed. I also don't drink much water closer to bedtime so I'm not rudely awakened in the middle of the night to urinate. I live in a place where the black-out blinds aren't a necessity. I've never messed with deep sound waves.
Of course, some folks will exclaim "Well I don't need a device to give me a report card on how well it thinks I slept!" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My sleep tracking now consists of putting my APAP on to counteract my sleep apnea, falling asleep within seconds because I'm like Pavlov's sleeping baby dog because of the machine, and then waking up and seeing what the machine says re: how long it has been pushing air in my nose.
It works surprisingly well, actually. If I only got 6.5 hours of APAP last night, then I will pretty reliably go to bed a little earlier tonight.
My takeaway from this is that someone should make a fake CPAP face mask for people who don't need a CPAP that tells you how long you've been wearing it. I'm 100% convinced that the mask itself is what makes me fall asleep so fast. Once the mask is on, my brain knows it's time for sleep and complies. I guess I don't know if that's the same for all APAP/CPAP/Bi-PAP users though.
I'm curious - How do stomach sleepers adjust to these masks? Or does sleep apnea only affect back sleepers? It would be impossible for me to sleep wearing a mask.
"Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker is an excellent book for those interested in what science has to say about sleep (disclaimer: it's excessively good for you)
Sleep is very important in all sorts of ways but Professor Walker was throwing everything at the wall in an effort to convince the reader to get better sleep at times. One chapter talking about how people who get less sleep will naturally want to eat more. Another chapter telling how rats with given constant diets and restricted sleep eventually starve to death. I do trust all his citations to be accurate but I'm also sure that if there was some way in which less sleep was good for you he wouldn't mention it.
But it was a very valuable book in terms of explaining just what sleep does for you.
it's good for you as in it will scare the shit out of you and make you pay attention to your sleep. the examples can be a little exaggerated and one has to wonder how anyone that does not get enough sleep is still alive - but yeah. if you haven't already, read the book
My hack is just fall asleep when putting the kids to sleep and wake up whenever I feel like. If I've been pushing hard, sometimes I'll take all 10 hours, other nights I'm up at 4am ready to work.
Hey, someone else who does the same thing as me! Yay! As soon as my wife and I put the kids down, we head to bed ourselves. Then I wakeup whenever, which frequently translates to 4-5am but like you, sometimes lasts until the kiddos wake up.
We're lucky that both of our kids have always been great sleepers, aside from occasional attempts to get up in the middle of the night and come sleep with mom & dad.
I'll share what I do. After being in the Army for a while, and waking up at 430 and going to bed at close to midnight for a long time during the week (there's no real "sleep schedule" overseas though) I've been working on tuning my sleep cycle for the seasons to great success. Over the last year I've been slightly altering my alarm each night based on when sunrise is (plus going to bed earlier/later as the days lengthen/shorten), and it's significantly improved how quickly I fall asleep, how easily I get out of bed in the morning, and how rested I feel. I'm not a huge "fitness tracker" guy (still analog in that regard, with a notebook for workouts instead of some app or a spreadsheet). No idea if there's any science behind any of what I'm doing and frankly I don't care. It works great for me.
I use a Samsung smartwatch that came with my Samsung S9 as a package deal.
The sleep tracker has been useful to me in tracking my quantity/quality and average sleep.
I still get to spend a few weeks a year a few times a year assessing human performance.
Sleep is absolutely critical to human physical, mental, emotional, and social performance.
And as the parent of adolescent children who are technology driven, monitoring their "digital nutrition", mixing in other activities, ensuring they are well fed/hydrated, and compelling good sleep hygiene is absolutely essential to their development as adolescents towards adulthood.
It's quite shocking to observe how common it is for both adults and children to be seen suffering from poor sleep hygiene.
sleep, healthy eating, and exercise are fundamental to living a long and fulfilling life. I think it's great that people are trying to determine in a quantitative way when we've "slept good." I sure as hell can use a device that can tell me if I've slept well, so i can try to establish a pattern between how i feel the next day and what these devices tell me as to how i slept.
Polysomnography seems like an area in desperate need of innovation to improve efficiency and lower cost. It is far too expensive for the entire undiagnosed sleep-deprived population to have a single sleep study let alone for those already diagnosed to have more frequent observation.
I recently went through a sleep study, and the doctor was openly aggravated by how current trends and devices focus on "deep sleep", when it's actually "light sleep" that we need to regain our mental focus.
Quite accurate, at least for time to sleep, and time asleep. I think the REM, NREM etc is mostly noise, if you are getting 8+ hours a night every night (super hard to do!) the quality of sleep should be fine.
The best thing is to set a "go to bed" alarm, for night owls like me its so easy to say you go to bed "around 10" when in fact it can be much later.
This is a great example of how quantitative facts decide over the qualitative evaluation of all things in Silicon Valley - including deeply personal matters like sleep and even relationships. I've been living in Silicon Valley for a while now and I can't believe my eyes and ears sometimes!
So why aren't we just using Sleep As Android like normal people, and not using some weird devices to track it? Absolutely don't understand the fetish of expensive devices just to track sleep, and I'm the one here with the non-24hr circadian rhythm.
Not everyone has an Android phone and some people don't like keeping their phones right next to their bed.
I have a fitbit charge 2 and that thing does more than just track sleep - heart rate, VO2 max, steps, connected GPS for running. So the expensive device is not a bad investment IMO.
In New Zealand, electric blankets are very common because (for the most part) we're too poor to live in insulated houses. It's hilarious that they've been re-discovered as a sleep hack for hyper-wealthy californians.
though this article is basically an ad for the oura ring, i do think sleep hygiene is an interesting topic and worthy of conversation. Would love to hear what the HN crowd thinks.
Apart from being a snarky article, the author does not propose any actual solutions. So what if a few folks try to hack sleep? Whatever floats their respective boats....
> It is hardly surprising that techies are not getting enough sleep, given the industry’s culture of long hours, and the widespread notion that for a true entrepreneur, everything else in life is secondary to succeeding at work.
This article was very snarky, even for the economist. It seems distinctly below their usual standard of quality with broad generalisations such as the above, seemingly contradicted by an anecdote about Bryan Johnson and others' bizarre sleep practices.
For me this article would have been a lot better if it focused on the sleep tech industry, and applied a more measured and evidence-based approach to its silicon valley criticisms, some of which certainly are relevant and worthy of discussion.
[+] [-] DenisM|6 years ago|reply
It's rather skeptical. Choice quote:
[...] The SRI researchers studied 41 healthy adolescents and young adults (average age 17). Sleep data were recorded using the Oura ring and standard PSG on a single laboratory overnight. Metrics were compared using Bland-Altman plots and epoch-by-epoch analysis.
The ring accurately detected "light" and "deep" sleep in 65% and 51% of the sleep epochs, respectively. It also accurately detected 61% of REM sleep epochs, with an overall overestimation of PSG REM sleep (by about 17 min). When the ring misclassified PSG REM sleep, the algorithm usually classified the epoch as "light sleep" (76%).
These data suggest that the Oura Ring is virtually useless in telling you if you are in REM sleep versus deep or light sleep. [...]
[+] [-] not_a_moth|6 years ago|reply
I'm 6 months on Oura, and I don't think it's actually that consistent, i.e. I don't think you can say "Oura shows 50% more deep sleep today, so even if the base mumber is wrong, I must have gotten 50% more deep sleep". I wear a fitbit to cross validate each night, and the readings on both often contradict each other seemingly arbitrarily, night to night.
Overall I've found they're great for tracking overall sleep time (HRV, heart rate, temp too) but I don't read too much into the actual sleep phase data. (Day-to-day self asessment of cognitive performance is probably the best proxy.)
[+] [-] RandallBrown|6 years ago|reply
I don't care if my scale at home is perfectly accurate. I care about knowing that my weight is going up/down.
[+] [-] neves|6 years ago|reply
Are there any weareable device that measures it well?
[+] [-] e40|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fizwhiz|6 years ago|reply
I think the protocol described in the article isn't anything terribly new. Most folks on HN know that blue light actually messes with sleep so if you're planning on using a screen until right before you goto bed it's a great idea to use the blue-light canceling computer glasses. Mindfulness meditation is generally a great practice to calm oneself and be reflective. I don't personally sleep at 8:45pm (rather, 11:45pm) but I do have my meal a few hours before I goto bed. I also don't drink much water closer to bedtime so I'm not rudely awakened in the middle of the night to urinate. I live in a place where the black-out blinds aren't a necessity. I've never messed with deep sound waves.
Of course, some folks will exclaim "Well I don't need a device to give me a report card on how well it thinks I slept!" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[1] https://ouraring.com/heart-rate-variability-basics/
[+] [-] novok|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DenisM|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hamuko|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kerng|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HansLandaa|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] checkyoursudo|6 years ago|reply
It works surprisingly well, actually. If I only got 6.5 hours of APAP last night, then I will pretty reliably go to bed a little earlier tonight.
My takeaway from this is that someone should make a fake CPAP face mask for people who don't need a CPAP that tells you how long you've been wearing it. I'm 100% convinced that the mask itself is what makes me fall asleep so fast. Once the mask is on, my brain knows it's time for sleep and complies. I guess I don't know if that's the same for all APAP/CPAP/Bi-PAP users though.
[+] [-] Brushfire|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ip26|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Havoc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hrzn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Symmetry|6 years ago|reply
But it was a very valuable book in terms of explaining just what sleep does for you.
[+] [-] rootusrootus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mirceal|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jchrisa|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rootusrootus|6 years ago|reply
We're lucky that both of our kids have always been great sleepers, aside from occasional attempts to get up in the middle of the night and come sleep with mom & dad.
[+] [-] Willson50|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] remarkEon|6 years ago|reply
I'll share what I do. After being in the Army for a while, and waking up at 430 and going to bed at close to midnight for a long time during the week (there's no real "sleep schedule" overseas though) I've been working on tuning my sleep cycle for the seasons to great success. Over the last year I've been slightly altering my alarm each night based on when sunrise is (plus going to bed earlier/later as the days lengthen/shorten), and it's significantly improved how quickly I fall asleep, how easily I get out of bed in the morning, and how rested I feel. I'm not a huge "fitness tracker" guy (still analog in that regard, with a notebook for workouts instead of some app or a spreadsheet). No idea if there's any science behind any of what I'm doing and frankly I don't care. It works great for me.
[+] [-] chriselles|6 years ago|reply
The sleep tracker has been useful to me in tracking my quantity/quality and average sleep.
I still get to spend a few weeks a year a few times a year assessing human performance.
Sleep is absolutely critical to human physical, mental, emotional, and social performance.
And as the parent of adolescent children who are technology driven, monitoring their "digital nutrition", mixing in other activities, ensuring they are well fed/hydrated, and compelling good sleep hygiene is absolutely essential to their development as adolescents towards adulthood.
It's quite shocking to observe how common it is for both adults and children to be seen suffering from poor sleep hygiene.
[+] [-] strikelaserclaw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasaloo|6 years ago|reply
If I were an insurance company I'd be lobbying the shit out of these guys to see how much they'd charge me to get my hands on it.
(and yeah, I read Oura's privacy agreement already... was less than impressed)
[+] [-] 3xblah|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beat|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cavisne|6 years ago|reply
https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-sleep-tracking-app/
Quite accurate, at least for time to sleep, and time asleep. I think the REM, NREM etc is mostly noise, if you are getting 8+ hours a night every night (super hard to do!) the quality of sleep should be fine.
The best thing is to set a "go to bed" alarm, for night owls like me its so easy to say you go to bed "around 10" when in fact it can be much later.
[+] [-] chandeliermbing|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peshooo|6 years ago|reply
What an over-generalization.
[+] [-] DiabloD3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krtkush|6 years ago|reply
I have a fitbit charge 2 and that thing does more than just track sleep - heart rate, VO2 max, steps, connected GPS for running. So the expensive device is not a bad investment IMO.
[+] [-] lacampbell|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dolguldur|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] par|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adharmad|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lukecameron|6 years ago|reply
This article was very snarky, even for the economist. It seems distinctly below their usual standard of quality with broad generalisations such as the above, seemingly contradicted by an anecdote about Bryan Johnson and others' bizarre sleep practices.
For me this article would have been a lot better if it focused on the sleep tech industry, and applied a more measured and evidence-based approach to its silicon valley criticisms, some of which certainly are relevant and worthy of discussion.
[+] [-] neves|6 years ago|reply
I'd also recommend earplugs and a good blackout curtain.
[+] [-] wyclif|6 years ago|reply