So now we're buying watches so that the doctor doesn't have to provide us with an apparatus to acquire data that only the doctor needs. Got it.
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Will you sleep with watch to track your sleep?
- Thread starter dmonnin
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So now we're buying watches so that the doctor doesn't have to provide us with an apparatus to acquire data that only the doctor needs. Got it.
Given that the expensive apparatus (the home sleep study unit) is only done during the initial sleep apnea diagnosis, I'm not sure what your point is?
My point was data during on-going treatment of a sleep disorder; not diagnosis. Also one point of clarification: when I meant I don't need to hand in the SD card, what I meant was the only person that wanted to look at that data was the insurance provider to make sure I used it for 4 hours every night.
I have sleep apnea as well. If you get the sleepyhead free desktop software, you can see all the data (there is TONS of info on your SD card). I never thought of the watch heart monitor, but it is something else to give to your pulmonologist.
For those that do not have sleep apnea (or you are undiagnosed), during an apnea event your heart will rapidly beat as you try to regain normal breathing patterns. It is worse than sprinting without warming up.
It would be nice to have and see this data.
Actually, for some people that have sleep issues such as sleep apnea, this feature would be great. Until you have serious issues with sleep, you don't know how important it is to track how well you are actually sleeping or if you are waking up multiple times a night w/o cognizantly remembering.
Serious question, how does tracking how you sleep enable you to change it? If you wake up multiple times at night and don't remember it, how is tracking your sleep going to allow you to stop waking up?
It helps with diagnosing and implementing treatment. Until I had in-home tests I had no idea the effects and dangers caused by apnea and what not. It puts a lot of strain on the heart, brain and other vital organs. I was sleeping but not getting enough oxygen to my brain due to light sleeping and waking up quite frequently. If I had something that would have tracked my sleep I would have found out much sooner before there were major issues.
... For most other people
<Apple Watch and Biology>
Helping to gauge how many hours of deep sleep one gets.
It can be more data for your doctor...
Someone brought a good point. Just shift the charging period to when you get home from work, and can have your phone next to you, so there will be less need for the watch.
I guess Im confused as are some of the others here.
If you have sleep apnea and that has already been determined - why would you be relying on the watch even if it did have this functionality? Shouldn't you be taking that a bit more seriously than relying on the watch?
If you don't know, but think there may be issues with your sleep - shouldn't you again be relying on something other than a watch or an iphone app if it could be a serious condition?
If you have sleep apnea and that has already been determined - why would you be relying on the watch even if it did have this functionality? Shouldn't you be taking that a bit more seriously than relying on the watch?
If you don't know, but think there may be issues with your sleep - shouldn't you again be relying on something other than a watch or an iphone app if it could be a serious condition?
I think you're mixing up "relying" with "providing data." My CPAP machine only doesn't track movement (I think) and def. doesn't track heart rate action.
All I'd like the watch to do is give me data I can analyze. I can then aggregate that data with things like activity levels during the day, and what I spent the night doing (How does Game of Thrones affect my sleep). I analyze data for a living, so I'm of the belief that there is no such thing as too many data points.
The thing with conditions is, unless you see your doctor every week, your going to have to track a lot of the data yourself. If I see my sleep doc once a year, and there is an app that tracks a years worth of sleep data (even if it's not as accurate as the home sleep study kit) she can combine with the data off my CPAP machine, that's good.
Also, I'm having bariatric surgery this year and hope to go off the CPAP machine. The sleep data off a watch would be nice to have to monitor that.
Like others say it doesn't but how you gonna charge it ? When you wake up in day and you have to do your daily chores? Like workout or whatever the case it?
It's about learning the relationship between your life style choices and sleep quality. Many studies have shown that getting poor quality sleep affects your health and work/school performance. Poor sleep is often a good indicator that something is very wrong in your life.
For example; if you have started a new job/relationship/college course and your sleep quality takes a nose dive and continues to be poor for months afterward, it may be worthwhile to reevaluate that decision and make a change.
Another example would be making a major purchase of something you want and not need and it's significantly impacting other areas of your life (e.g., buying an excessively large house and no longer being able to afford to send your kids to a better school or college or forcing your wife to have to work rather than stay home with the kids).
And like I said in earlier posts, to track sleep quality accurately, you need both motion sensing and continuous heart rate monitoring.
I wore a Fitbit to track my sleeping for a while. If you have anything approaching "normal" sleep patterns then there isn't a point. I could see how if you chronically sleep really poorly it might be useful to try and identify the problem.
But for me I would wake up after a bad night's sleep and feel terrible and then check the data and be like "yup, I slept crappy". The next morning I would wake up feeling great and check the data. Confirmed! I slept better.
It's not actionable. And you pretty much know if you slept well or not.
Saying you slept well when you wake up is like saying eating Taco Bell didn't affect your digestive system after the first bite. There are times I could swear I slept well when I get up, but by the time I get to work I'm rethinking that. Also, days like today I woke up feeling like I slept like **** and by the time I got to work I feel like I did actually sleep well.
But, as we've been saying this data is only good for people who need to track this stuff already.
Personally, I wouldn't know what to do with any sleep data a watch or bracelet could give me. However, I've used an app that attempts to determine, based on movement, when you are in deep sleep and therefore, when to wake you. You give it a time period when you want to get up (along with an "absolute latest" time) and during that period it will attempt to determine when the best time to wake you based on your sleep cycle. The app has its flaws since you have to sleep with the iPhone under your pillow and could accidentally be affected by your sleep partners movements. Having a device on your wrist that could better detect just your movements along with your pulse could be much more accurate.
I wish the Apple Watch provided this functionality but with the requirement to charge (and for at least a few hours), there isn't much point for this gen.
Now, it would be pretty cool if they developed a band which could be worn while the actual Apple Watch charges and provided sleep cycle information for alarm purposes.
Now, it would be pretty cool if they developed a band which could be worn while the actual Apple Watch charges and provided sleep cycle information for alarm purposes.
If you're really desperate to track your sleep patterns, pick up Sleep Time for iOS. You keep your phone on the bed while you sleep (you can keep it plugged in) and it does a nice job... and it's 99¢.
That said, as much discussion as there has been about using the Apple Watch to track sleep, I still have yet to see an explanation for why most people would need to.
That said, as much discussion as there has been about using the Apple Watch to track sleep, I still have yet to see an explanation for why most people would need to.
Don't you suppose that some jobs are probably best left to medical professionals?
This is what I've been asking all along, and nobody seems to have a good answer.
But yet again, you haven't addressed the question:
If you wear this watch to sleep, and you end up with a bunch of data, what do you do with it to make your life any better? I'm not talking about taking it to a doctor; they have their own equipment for making diagnoses, and I don't understand why someone would want to shell out their own money to make the doctor's job easier or geekier - how does it serve YOU?
The only machine I sleep with that collects data is my CPAP, and that only really tracks oxygen/sleep apnea events.
I don't understand why giving my doctor better data over a prolonged period is a bad thing? Have you ever had a sleep study? The joke is you never get a good night's rest with all that machinery hooked up to you. It serves me great if I can give my doctor information about movement and O2 levels she can correlate to the data on my CPAP, no?
But, there's the crucial point: I don't need to convince you, do I? All I want is more data to analyze and correlate to events. A person monitoring their sleep apnea is not unlike a diabetic monitoring their glucose levels.
Info is useful for some and not for others. If you don't need the info, then don't track the info. Simple enough. This is like logging migraines along with what you did and ate that day (and sleep info is good too!) for migraine sufferers. If you need the pieces of data, those pieces of data along with the knowledge of what you did and ate can help you determine patterns and you can go, "Ok so _______ has consistently triggered a migraine for the last two months. I apparently need to stop eating that." If you don't get migraines, the information isn't useful. But if you do, the information is the difference between agonizing, debilitating pain and being comfortable. Has nothing to do with leaving the medical stuff to a doctor. My doctor doesn't have to tell me that peppermint is a migraine trigger for me. I'm the only one who can tell my doctor that.