Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sleepless in Silicon Valley

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 120 posts

Re: Sleepless in Silicon Valley

#111

Post by abhimanyugrover »

not_a_moth wrote: post #101
DenisM wrote: post #24

Another view on the Oura thing: https://www.medpagetoday.com/practicemanagement/informationt... 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 det…

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…

> Day-to-day self asessment of cognitive performance is probably the best proxy.

How do you do that?

Re: Sleepless in Silicon Valley

#112

Post by krageon »

abhimanyugrover wrote: post #111
not_a_moth wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Day-to-day self asessment of cognitive performance is probably the best proxy. How do you do that?

Measure it using a series of cognitive performance tests. You could even just grade your own experience day to day - assuming you feel everything is a little worse when you sleep poorly (a sensible assumption), you will probably get representative data.

Re: Sleepless in Silicon Valley

#115

Post by neves »

adharmad wrote: post #4

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....

Here: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/files/docs/public/sleep/healthy_sle...

I'd also recommend earplugs and a good blackout curtain.

Re: Sleepless in Silicon Valley

#116

Post by oddie »

The accuracy of estimating sleep stages using heart rate and movement metrics is an interesting, and tenuous, subject. WRT to Fitbit and Oura the TLDR is that Fitbit and Oura aren’t accurate for slow wave (Deep Sleep) or REM. However, Fitbit is better at REM detection [1][2] than Oura.

While sleep staging can be useful for identifying case sleep disorders, we know that the brain self-optimizes the stages of sleep you go through.

So, what’s far more important than worrying about your rem or deep is optimizing getting time in any stage of sleep. Each stage is critical in a different way.

If you care about improving your performance the measures you should care about—backed by strong scientific consensus and a plurality of randomized evidence—are sleep debt and where you are in your circadian rhythm. Sleep scientists call this the two factor model

This reality drove us to create a sleep improvement app, called Rise ([https://www.risescience.com](https://www.risescience.com/)). We started both our research and company initially for elite athletes. We tell them what to do to improve their sleep tonight based on science. It's currently being used by both professional and collegiate teams across the NFL, MLB, NBA, MLS, and NCAAF.

We've been taking what we've learned from athletes and adapting for us regular folk.

If you're interested in joining our beta, sign up here: [http://bit.ly/hacker-friends](http://bit.ly/hacker-friends)

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28323455](https://www.nc...

[2] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29235907](https://www.nc...

Re: Sleepless in Silicon Valley

#117

Post by fizwhiz »

mirceal wrote: post #102
Hamuko wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I probably have the cash. But it's just for tracking sleep. I know that I sleep like shit. I go to bed at 0030 and wake up at 0700. Don't really know what difference the ring would make here. No idea what the ring would tell me what I don't really know and how in the world I would turn the data into something usable.

so there are several levels to "improving your sleep". I agree that if you sleep like shit and only get 4 hours per night you don't need the ring. you need to get more sleep. but for some people that actually sleep well and want to tweak the quality of their sleep it can be valuable. let me give a few example of such tweaks: altering the time you go to bed, altering the surface you sleep on, reducing the amount of bl…

Said it better than I could.

Re: Sleepless in Silicon Valley

#118

Post by dolguldur »

lacampbell wrote: post #79

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.

Yours are probably just heating. Theirs are cooling

Re: Sleepless in Silicon Valley

#119

Post by chillacy »

rootusrootus wrote: post #65
hrzn wrote: post #22

"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)

Sometimes I wonder if Mr. Walker is paying people at HN to talk about his book :). Comes up more often than I'd expect.

He should write me a check, I’ve recommended that book on HN and offline to at least 5 new readers.

Re: Sleepless in Silicon Valley

#120

Post by yocheckit »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #97
yocheckit wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Care to elaborate?

REM is "light sleep", one 3 hour-ish sleep cycle is "NREM stage I -> NREM stage II -> NREM stage III -> REM" where REM is considered "pretty close to awake" and NREM stage numbers are "progressively deeper". Deeper basically means lower body temperature, less movement, and slower breathing. This is on the basis of clustering/pattern matching body movement, body temperature, and some brain wave/MRI crap. VERY broadly…

huh, that is fascinating to hear. Will definitely be keeping an eye on this space, thanks for the info.
Post reply on HN