Tracking Your Sleep: HELP Explained
Sleep Sufficiently is one of the ten elements of HELP: The Health, Energy & Longevity Plan. Poor sleep quality (and insufficient quantity) diminish your readiness for the challenges of the day and also contribute to poor health.
Various devices such as the Apple Watch and Fitbit include features to track sleep cycles. There's even an iPhone app that purports to measure your sleep patterns without any other device: you just set your phone on the nightstand and it senses your sleep state and responds accordingly. You set a wake-up time, and for the 30 minutes before that deadline the app alarm wakes you when you're in light sleep, so you'll feel less groggy and more refreshed than if you are awakened from a deep sleep.
From my perspective, though, the king of the hill of sleep-related gadgets is the Oura Ring.
Oura not only tracks sleep cycle phases (Awake, REM, Light and Deep) but also heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), temperature and respiration. When synced to the Oura app on your smart phone it provides both a Sleep score for the night and also a Readiness score that estimates how well you have recovered from activities of the previous day. More recently it has added oxygen saturation and, for women, period prediction.
Here are my readings from Monday night:
I have gotten some really good insights through my Oura ring. The second time I had COVID I noticed just as I started to have symptoms that my body temperature was three degrees higher than normal. And when I was having some post-COVID brain fog, I noticed that I'd had a few days in a row with only one or two minutes of deep sleep. Normally I get 40-45 minutes, and sometimes more than an hour.
When I haven't been sleeping well, and particularly when my Readiness score is low, the Oura app will provide guidance to take it easier on workouts. I think that's helped me avoid some illnesses, getting the extra rest to recuperate.
Oura is not inexpensive: the base price is about $299, plus a $5.99/month membership. I'm able to offer a $40 discount if you want to purchase one using this link. Neither HELPcare nor I get any compensation or commission from your purchase. I'm just sharing the offer I have as a current user in case it helps.
Because it is on the pricey side, you might consider giving Oura to that special person "who has everything." Or if you're that person and your kids are always perplexed by what they should give you for Christmas, maybe this would solve a problem for them, too.
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