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How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

empirical.health

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Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#121

Post by BaculumMeumEst »

emporas wrote: post #119
BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wut? Never heard of this. How are you increasing blood pressure on your head? Are you hanging upside down?

>Are you hanging upside down? No, but that was a popular torture fathers did to kids some decades back. I know several people, all men, whom their fathers tied the legs to a rope and hung them upside down for some hours, when they were boys. Pretty funny! Much simpler actually. Just hung your head lower than your body, from a bed, a sofa, or even a motorcycle as much as you can, 10 minutes or half an hour. It is a go…

I’ll try anything once! Probably not the sleeping part, though, I elevate in the other direction because of heartburn…

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#122

Post by tmoertel »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #106
dave333 wrote: post #102

Amazing that you can get much the same functionality in a off brand $30 watch these days - at least monitors sleep and blood oxygen - although it explicitly does not do medical diagnosis. Still every senior should have one for many reasons.

I have extremely severe sleep apnea with 60-100 events per minute, and baseline blood oxygen is low to start with because I live at altitude. I'm very into wearables and have tested most of the top SpO2 capable watches and none of them detect my sleep apnea outside a very rare detection of low O2.

> 60-100 events per minute

Do you mean per hour?

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#123

Post by 015a »

swatcoder wrote: post #27
abtinf wrote: post #10

I’ve always wished I could put Apple Watch into a “constant oxygen monitor mode” for sleep. That seems to be the obvious way to assess sleep apnea. Anyone know why that isn’t the method?

There's a ton of cleverness involved in keeping an extremely compact device with radios and sensors running for tens of hours on a tiny battery while making it seem like it's always awake and ready to go when you need it to be. But the reality is that everything that needs any kind of power is being aggressively idled down and time sliced and being made sample-based as can be gotten away with. You can easily get a se…

To be frank: I think what you're saying is true only of the Apple Watch, and Apple is wrong to believe that their priorities are the ones which would resonate most with their customers. Bands from Garmin, Whoop, and others have 24/7/365 sensor collection, with battery life measured in days and weeks.

Apple instead prioritizes 3000 nit displays, laptop-class processors, and 60fps touch interactions. These are all characteristics which make for great keynote slideshows, and maybe even close a lot of "first time smartwatch" sales, but I simply don't encounter anyone who wouldn't trade much of that for an Apple-made device that lasts 3+ days and has higher resolution sensor collection. The sleep apnea detection alone is, while interesting, something of a farce when it was followed up with a "18 Hour Battery Life" slide; yes you can make it work, but its an active decision by Apple to ask you to, and it doesn't have to be this way.

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#124

Post by codr7 »

BaculumMeumEst wrote: post #116
emporas wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleep apnea is very easily fixed. You have to increase blood pressure on the head by a lot, for a little bit of time each day, half an hour to an hour and it is 100% fixable. Additionaly increasing blood pressure on the head helps for sleeping more. I do that and sleep for an average of 10 hours a day. 12 hours or 14 hours/day of sleep for me, is not rare either. Also increasing the blood pressure on the head helps f…

Wut? Never heard of this. How are you increasing blood pressure on your head? Are you hanging upside down?

There's a beginners pose in Yoga called The Clown that should be perfectly doable for most people.

But getting fit enough for a regular headstand is a pretty solid investment from my experience.

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#125

Post by bamboozled »

cromka wrote: post #2

Considering they use accelerometer for it, nothing really stops them from adding this feature to all Apple Watches, potentially even the Series 1, right? Reserving it to Series 10 and 9 really exposes their lack of hardware innovation. I mean, we were talking about them measuring glucose levels for years and this is what we get as a new flagship feature?

They're not adding it to the Ultra 1 either, what amazing advancements happened since the Ultra 1 to stop that from happening?

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#126

Post by bluGill »

krisoft wrote: post #118
bluGill wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should have a Dr who keeps track of all your medical information. I want my doctor to know each time I take an Aspirin or put on a bandage. Most of the time those are meaningless activities (and I don't tell my doctor), but once in a while there is something more going on and I need to be forced into the ER.

> I want my doctor to know each time I take an Aspirin or put on a bandage. What do you think your doctor will do based on this data? How do you think your doctor will filter out the signal from all the noise? (Is there even a signal?) > but once in a while there is something more going on and I need to be forced into the ER. Do you have a concrete example here?

Look up the symptoms of a heart attack. Everyone is also a sign of something miner.

as for telling the difference we need a lot of help there.

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#127

Post by ugh123 »

smaudet wrote: post #42
a_vanderbilt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The health industry as a whole is insane. I support the use of regulation and law where it ensures safety and efficacy but in the U.S. it's currently a patent and legal minefield. So much of it comes directly from special interests who want gatekeeping to keep out new/disruptive competition.

On the other side, as a consumer, I don't really want "new/disruptive competition" - I want stability and a legal guarantee my rights aren't being trod all over. Large companies e.g. Google/Apple are just inherently untrustworthy in this regards, smaller overseas ones are no better (little to no regulation). So please, no, stay the ** out of my health, thanks.

So you're cool with the pace of innovation and value-per-cost that existing medical companies provide?

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#128

Post by lesuorac »

015a wrote: post #123
swatcoder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a ton of cleverness involved in keeping an extremely compact device with radios and sensors running for tens of hours on a tiny battery while making it seem like it's always awake and ready to go when you need it to be. But the reality is that everything that needs any kind of power is being aggressively idled down and time sliced and being made sample-based as can be gotten away with. You can easily get a se…

To be frank: I think what you're saying is true only of the Apple Watch, and Apple is wrong to believe that their priorities are the ones which would resonate most with their customers. Bands from Garmin, Whoop, and others have 24/7/365 sensor collection, with battery life measured in days and weeks. Apple instead prioritizes 3000 nit displays, laptop-class processors, and 60fps touch interactions. These are all char…

> 18 Hour Battery Life

Didn't see the slide by my apple watch definitely lasts way longer than 18 hours. But, I also have the screen default to off instead of always on (lets be real, who spends all day staring at their watch; motion activated turning on seems like not even a compromise).

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#129

Post by vlachen »

code_biologist wrote: post #115
vlachen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mouth-tape, and I use a CPAP. However, since I prefer the nasal cushion type, I did run into issues with my partner regarding my mouth falling open and horrible "pumping air through your sinuses" noises emanating from my face hole. Instead of spending more from the home health shop, I just grabbed headband that came in some past 5K race bag, and I strap it around my head prior to the CPAP head gear. In my par…

Sleepy me tends to rip off things like headbands. I have a beard and use GrifGrips sports tape to mouth tape. I've found the level of adhesiveness to be a perfect balance of strength and removability. Not the cheapest, but quality stuff.

In my case with this, it runs under the headgear straps, so it tends to stay on and in place just as well as the rest.

Re: How on-the-wrist sleep apnea detection works

#130

Post by makeitdouble »

jjk166 wrote: post #59
smaudet wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other side, as a consumer, I don't really want "new/disruptive competition" - I want stability and a legal guarantee my rights aren't being trod all over. Large companies e.g. Google/Apple are just inherently untrustworthy in this regards, smaller overseas ones are no better (little to no regulation). So please, no, stay the ** out of my health, thanks.

That's the cool thing about competition though - you can continue spending your money on the current super expensive option if you like. But others who may not value that stability can choose something else. Personally, I consider big pharma companies the absolute least trustworthy, and I would never choose to purchase anything from them if I would not literally otherwise die. Regulations are not fundamentally bad, b…

When it comes to healthcare, that's a lot more complicated though.

Wider competition with less control/accuracy will often mean that fads get more profitable: for instance "gluten free" sells enough that it makes sense for random makers to slap the label on their product even if they don't really care to follow the most rigorous rules.

Letting the market decide will result in the minority (those actually affected by the products) to get shafted, as more and more companies will move to the lower standards they can get by, instead of keeping high priced products that don't sell as well.

That doesn't mean that the status quo is great, but at least we need to be pretty cautious on the direction we want to go. "Let's just do something and see how it goes" isn't a desirable strategy when people are at risk.

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