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Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

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Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#101

Post by atotic »

TylerE wrote: post #92
elric wrote: post #49

Anecdata: Have sleep apnea, so am interested in better sleep, and I'm hooked up to a CPAP machine which registers every breath I take. I've tried several devices (withings, 2 garmin smart watches and a fitbit), and quite frankly, the results have been appalling. Some random observations: * My latest garmin has an "SpO2" sensor. Which is basically a random number generator with red LED. When I compare the results with…

How are you getting that much data off a cpap? Mine will give me basic states (on time, # apnea events) but not much else.

There are online communities dedicated to these questions. Looks like the current tool of choice is OSCR https://gitlab.com/pholy/OSCAR-code

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#102

Post by JesseAldridge »

I tried a few and I like Emfit's tracker the best: https://www.amazon.com/Emfit-QS/dp/B0158W3E2A

It's nice because it goes under your mattress so you don't have to wear anything. The results seem to be accurate, at least when it comes to detecting tossing and turning vs sleeping.

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#103

Post by eps »

gtbcb wrote: post #19

https://ouraring.com/ is pretty awesome. I've started sleeping more, at more consistent times, and consuming less caffeine and alcohol. $75 off - http://ouraring.com/partners/rohannatraj - doesn't benefit me, just a coupon I received myself.

Bought it few months ago, mostly due to being impressed by the engineering side of it, then had a closer look at the data it was collecting at night and it looked very much like something pulled out of someone's ass. It literally did NOT correlate to what's been happening. It showed "deep sleep" for times that I was awake and was checking my watch, it also showed REM sleep when it was clearly a deep phase, etc.

First time it happened, I let it slide and gave it another chance. Then it needed another chance, and another... and the I gave up. I ultimately lost all trust in what it was reporting.

It's still a beautiful piece of engineering, it just doesn't do what it claims to be doing :-/

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#104

Post by mattjaynes »

hoopism wrote: post #32

I recall reading a paper that found that compared to clinical sleep study equipment (you know, electrodes all over your head) that most devices were random at best in terms of measuring REM sleep. I did a lot of research when a friend went all in on sleep monitoring and wound up worse than when he started (worrying over data). I didn't exhaustively research but based on un-biased available science I found at the time…

I have pretty big doubts about the usefulness of clinical sleep tests after having had one a few years ago. Perhaps they work well for very deep and immediate sleepers. But with the electrodes, a strange location, multiple interruptions, a sleep position I never sleep in, etc, it was probably one of the worst nights of sleep in my life. The doctor seemed to disregard all of that and treat it as my typical night sleep and based the treatment recommendations on it, which is when I realized I needed to seek help elsewhere. I've found other methods like Fitbit come closer to reality since they record the data under normal sleep conditions.

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#105

Post by jazzyjackson »

gtbcb wrote: post #19

https://ouraring.com/ is pretty awesome. I've started sleeping more, at more consistent times, and consuming less caffeine and alcohol. $75 off - http://ouraring.com/partners/rohannatraj - doesn't benefit me, just a coupon I received myself.

Thanks for the discount, don't know if I ever had a coupon that forces me to make a decision in 30 minutes! Smart way to make a sale, give me just enough time to do a little research knowing the clock is ticking...

I was about to close the tab but then I saw they have developer tools where you can get an API key to access your own data -- very cool

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#106

Post by gonehome »

narak wrote: post #100

I agree with the posts saying most are of little to no value, maybe even negative considering anxiety from monitoring. I think a decent proxy for obstructions is a good pulse oximeter. I would also recommend getting your vitamin D levels checked. The normal range is far below what you should be at from my experience. 60-80ng/ml is an ideal range ("normal" from my lab is anywhere from 30-100) from what I've read. Can…

60-80? That seems high - I don't think you could be at that without taking a lot of supplements every day.

I think 30 is the lab normal (and it was recently raised to 30 from 20) - though a lot of people are below that when tested.

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#107

Post by narak »

gonehome wrote: post #106
narak wrote: post #100

I agree with the posts saying most are of little to no value, maybe even negative considering anxiety from monitoring. I think a decent proxy for obstructions is a good pulse oximeter. I would also recommend getting your vitamin D levels checked. The normal range is far below what you should be at from my experience. 60-80ng/ml is an ideal range ("normal" from my lab is anywhere from 30-100) from what I've read. Can…

60-80? That seems high - I don't think you could be at that without taking a lot of supplements every day. I think 30 is the lab normal (and it was recently raised to 30 from 20) - though a lot of people are below that when tested.

Recent research (as in the last 10 years) seems to suggest that current RDI is at least an order of magnitude lower than it should be. I have no medical background, but anecdotally, it has helped my sleep a lot. I'm generally a supplement skeptic, but currently taking 6k IU a day.

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#108

Post by runarb »

TylerE wrote: post #92
elric wrote: post #49

Anecdata: Have sleep apnea, so am interested in better sleep, and I'm hooked up to a CPAP machine which registers every breath I take. I've tried several devices (withings, 2 garmin smart watches and a fitbit), and quite frankly, the results have been appalling. Some random observations: * My latest garmin has an "SpO2" sensor. Which is basically a random number generator with red LED. When I compare the results with…

How are you getting that much data off a cpap? Mine will give me basic states (on time, # apnea events) but not much else.

Probably using SleepyHead or OSCR: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwjd4w/im-possibly-alive-...

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#109

Post by pedalpete »

I currently use an Oura ring, which I like, but it only tells me how I sleep, I'm looking for the data around WHY I didn't sleep well.

So I'm building an app (still in dev) https://withbliss.net in order to track my day and activities so I can look for trends around what is affecting my sleep positively or negatively.

Please sign-up and I'll drop you a note when the beta is ready. Shouldn't be too long. Very keen to hear get this out quickly and get feedback.

Re: Ask HN: Best sleep trackers?

#110

Post by JshWright »

elric wrote: post #63
joveian wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me, I was suprised to learn that ECGs can measure breathing (well, not the least expensive ones but most). If breathing is enough then an ECG might be one of the better ways for anyone who doesn't need CPAP and there are some available with local analysis software. They do require a prescripition in many places.

The way I understand it, breathing has an impact on heart rate variability, mostly because the chest cavity expands/contracts, which impacts the vagus nerve, which can then cause the HR to vary a bit. I don't know how reliable it is and if you can reconstruct every breath based on that data. I imagine shallower breaths would have less of an impact. Perhaps someone more knowlegeable can pitch in?

Breathing in causes systolic pressure to drop slightly. The negative pressure in the chest cavity decreases the amount of blood that fills the heart prior to contracting ("preload"). The drop is small (More advanced ECGs can measure the impedance of the chest (which changes as you breath). This is more complicated to implement, but much more reliable.

In either case, it's not something you'd be able to measure without several stickers on your chest, with wires running to some central box. I think the CPAP would be less obtrusive. If you don't need a full fledged CPAP, you could use something like nasal capnography, that just measures exhaled CO2.

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