I think it would be good if the article mentioned data sources, but perhaps I’m projecting since I have a lot of experience with them. Right now I’m using three devices to assess my sleep. One is motion based and the quality of the data is limited. The other two are wristbands that combine pulse with arm motion to automatically detect and record sleep. Both of them divide sleep into deep, shallow, and REM, but they disagree quite a bit on the actual details when they measure my sleep. (And I wear both of them on the same wrist, too.) If there is interest I can provide more details (including some impressions from older activity monitors).
As I thought about my own data going back some years, I was reminded that age is an important factor, but it doesn’t appear to be mentioned in the article. I actually think I may be sleeping pretty well after adjusting for that factor.
Interesting. None of the sleep doctors I spoke to recommended data sources. However, they seemed to consider even at-home professional sleep tests with skepticism, so this might say more about the level of accuracy they want than about the potential usefulness of personal devices.
As for age, I tried to focus this post on actionable advice. The non-actionable factors that influence sleep are simply to numerous for me to cover properly, and, unfortunately, however impactful aging is on sleep, reversing aging isn’t (yet!) in my repertoire of recommendations.
I think it would be good if the article mentioned data sources, but perhaps I’m projecting since I have a lot of experience with them. Right now I’m using three devices to assess my sleep. One is motion based and the quality of the data is limited. The other two are wristbands that combine pulse with arm motion to automatically detect and record sleep. Both of them divide sleep into deep, shallow, and REM, but they disagree quite a bit on the actual details when they measure my sleep. (And I wear both of them on the same wrist, too.) If there is interest I can provide more details (including some impressions from older activity monitors).
As I thought about my own data going back some years, I was reminded that age is an important factor, but it doesn’t appear to be mentioned in the article. I actually think I may be sleeping pretty well after adjusting for that factor.
Interesting. None of the sleep doctors I spoke to recommended data sources. However, they seemed to consider even at-home professional sleep tests with skepticism, so this might say more about the level of accuracy they want than about the potential usefulness of personal devices.
As for age, I tried to focus this post on actionable advice. The non-actionable factors that influence sleep are simply to numerous for me to cover properly, and, unfortunately, however impactful aging is on sleep, reversing aging isn’t (yet!) in my repertoire of recommendations.