To sleep, perchance to datamine

June 18, 2022 11:33 AM

Do any of the 7 million gadgets strewn across the undiscovered countryside of 'sleep tracking' do a decent job of detecting and reporting if/when the various sleep stages are engaged? I'm specifically interested in a device that would show *when* I enter REM sleep and for how long. I have reason to suspect this happens very little for me and if it does, not until very very late in the overall sleep cycle. I have a Gen4 Apple Watch which AFAICT can't do what I need. I'm happy to get another device.

Many years ago in the run up to a sleep apnea diagnosis I had a couple sleep studies done, and both revealed REM onset latency and decreased REM stage time. Later I discovered that one of the antidepressant medications I'd taken for many years was known to have that effect.

I've used the CPAP every. single. night. since then and though there has been some improvement, it has not been fantastic. The cpap machine's online sleep activity report regularly gives high marks to my sleep (in terms of little to no apneas, etc.) even when I've awoken in a state of exhaustion. I no longer take the above-mentioned medication, but I now take others, one of which definitely has a strong affect on sleep and is also known to affect sleep architecture in a similar way as above. I'm living with Bipolar II so sleep can a bit of a goat rodeo in general, and at the moment unlikely to be a thing to attempt without the aid of psychopharmacology. Fortunately, now, when I fall asleep, I *stay* asleep til morning, and I am told by a very light-sleeping bed partner that I do not move at all during sleep. I wake in the exact position I went to sleep in.

I am looking uncover data to compare against my subjective experience and all the things I've heard while spending way too much time at Dr Google's office, and to guide the next step which likely would to get another sleep study, a course of action which is possible but may be difficult to execute because Reasons.

Thanks, denizens of The Green.

posted by armoir from antproof case to Health & Fitness (10 answers total)

The Oura ring says it can do this. My spouse got one recently but hasn't had it long enough to track how well its measurements line up with subjective experience.
posted by expialidocious at 12:29 PM on June 18, 2022

I have been using the AutoSleep app with my Gen4 Apple Watch, and it breaks down each night by total time asleep, deep sleep, quality sleep, average heart rate, respiration, etc. The data that it records seems to align fairly well with how I feel the next morning. (I feel like I slept well, or I was restless, I had nightmares, or it took forever to fall asleep, etc.)
posted by xedrik at 1:04 PM on June 18, 2022

I use the "Pillow" app on my Apple Watch 4 for this. There's a free version, which gives basic daily info, and a paid subscription, which can show you trends in REM sleep and lots of other neat stuff. The free version has been sufficient for me.
It would be interesting to have a medical sleep study if you can get one, and wear the Apple watch at the same time, and compare the results. I have no idea how accurate the watch's interpretation is, but it seems to at least roughly correlate with reality.
posted by Corvid at 2:43 PM on June 18, 2022

My Fitbit Charge 4 claims to be able to do this. I take any individual night with a big grain of salt but I would imagine that you could see trends over time. But yeah it obviously can't look at my eyes to see if they are Moving Rapidly, it's just inferring from my relative heart rates.
posted by potrzebie at 4:21 PM on June 18, 2022

If your CPAP machine is one of the ones supported by OSCAR you can use it to get a way more detailed report than the online thing. It can't tell when you're in REM (and neither can an Apple Watch or Fitbit, really) but you can infer from some of the graphs. It also shows things like flow limitations that can affect sleep quality without really counting as apnea.
posted by mmoncur at 7:42 PM on June 18, 2022

I haven't tried it, but the Muse headband claims to. I did try the now-discontinued Zeo headband, which also claimed to do this, and found the results plausible.
posted by jocelmeow at 6:31 AM on June 19, 2022

The Oura Ring latest generation includes the different sleep stages in its reports.
posted by matildaben at 8:31 AM on June 19, 2022

My Fitbit allegedly measures these things and I get readings. In fairness I just care how much sleep over all so no idea how reliable or otherwise the output is.
posted by koahiatamadl at 9:15 AM on June 19, 2022

I switched from Fitbit to an Apple Watch (and the AutoSleep app) and I'm suddenly getting an hour's more sleep a night, just like that! So as far as I'm concerned either is fine for setting a baseline, but the number doesn't reflect an actual, sciencey fact.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:32 PM on June 19, 2022

So many great answers. Thank you, all. Based on some of the feedback here, Muse is grabbing my attention (thanks @jocelmeow).

@Megami, given that the Muse has EEG capability, might it have a better chance than others to detect sleep stages (or at least REM) ?
posted by armoir from antproof case at 10:22 PM on June 20, 2022