Charge 3 shows too much awake time

[Teacherrenee]

Why does my tracker show over an hour of awake time consistently each night?  I know that's not accurate. What body situations would constitute awareness?

Moderator edit: updated subject for clarity

[MarreFitbit]

I'm glad to see a new member around, welcome @Teacherrenee! It’s normal to see awake minutes in your sleep stages; studies have shown a typical adult could wake up briefly between 10-30 times per night. You may not remember waking up since you likely fell right back to sleep, especially if you were awake for less than 2-3 minutes at a time. If you wake up in the morning feeling like you had a restless night, you may notice more awake minutes in your sleep stages as compared to other nights.

If you previously tracked sleep with Fitbit, your log included the time spent awake, restless, and asleep. We’ve fine-tuned the mechanism we use to track sleep in order to estimate your sleep stages by including heart rate and other data. As a result, we’ve combined the time you spend awake and restless into total awake minutes to give you a better sense of your sleep cycles. 

You may notice more awake minutes in sleep stages than in your previous sleep data due to this change and note that sleep stages aren't affected by the sleep sensitivity setting on your tracker. 

There are a few scenarios where you might see your sleep pattern (which shows your time asleep, restless, and awake) instead of sleep stages:

• If you slept in a position that prevented your tracker from getting a consistent heart-rate reading or wore it too loosely. 
• If you used the Begin Sleep Now option in the Fitbit app (instead of simply wearing your tracker to bed). 
• If you slept for less than 3 hours.
• If your tracker’s battery is critically low

One thing I recommend is switching your heart rate setting to 'On' instead of 'Auto.' If the heart rate setting is set to 'On' your heart rate will always be active. Keep in mind that you need to record heart rate to calculate sleep stages. If you were to turn off heart rate, your sleep logs will go back to the classic style.

In addition, I think it's great that you update the Fitbit app to the latest version (iOS and Android). I always recommend keeping both the tracker and the Fitbit app up to date with the latest versions. 

Also, please take a look at all the requirements for receiving sleeping stages in this post. 

Lastly, our team has informed us about some in-app notification improvements coming soon. 

Hope this helps my friend!

[SandGirl]

I have had mine for a week - I am on the normal setting for sleep

and each night I wake between 40-55 times - in bed over 8 hours and asleep less than 5.  urg!

[Teacherrenee]

I know. It's discouraging.

Moderator edit: word choice

[Jennimom]

Have you been able to fix the too much awake time problem? I have that problem too. It says I was awake for a 19  minute period last night for example and I was not. Certainly I would have some awareness and remember if I was awake that long! Lately I have little REM sleep too and wondering if some kind of mistake in REM vs awake time. 

[Teacherrenee]

I'm still getting the lengthy sleep time. I guess there's no way to read in bed without that time being counted as awake. same for waking up in the morning and lying awake.

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Moderator edit: word choice.

[TomFVA_1]

I have a question about sleep cycles and heart rate logs that I think might be relevant to this thread -- is there a way to graphically overlay (in the web dashboard or on the mobile device) the heart rate log and the sleep log? If there are periods of time when the log suggests I'm "awake" that coincide with some sort of elevated heart rate, that could explain the "awake" label the tracker assigns to that period of time (when it is long enough that I would think there would be some level of awareness that I'm actually "awake").

[dnvigerjr · Accepted solution]

It bothers me, too! There IS a difference between being “awake” and being “restless”, and it should differentiate! “Awake” would be going to sleep and in the middle of your sleep awaken and read a book, watch TV! For instance where it used to say “awake and restless” it would split it up, and say awake 8 min, and now by lumping the two together it says “awake” an hour and 7 min. That’s nuts and inaccurate!

[dnvigerjr]

I agree! I think heart rate may elevate when you have certain dreams, have to move from side to side for comfort, even though you are unconscious and NOT awake, yet you get dinged for being so-called and misdiagnosed “awake” instead of restless.

what it does and how it misleads us is to give us credit for far less beneficial sleep time because we are “awake”, when we really are not!

[dnvigerjr]

It’s just plain not accurate! I liked it and received legit feedback when it broke it down between restless and awake!

[dnvigerjr]

I hope they go back and differentiate between “awake” and “restless”! The two are NOT the same! There’s a difference between being awake watching TV or reading a book” and just being “restless”!

[dnvigerjr]

Realistically restless IS different than being awake! Without separating the two, your sleep results are worthless!

[punkynpye]

Hey Everyone, all human beings are awake for a large amount of time in the night. All humans. The reason you don’t notice it is because going back to sleep erases the memories of your being awake. This is not a problem with Fitbit. If you spent hundreds on a sleep lab they would tell you the same thing. 

[CMS21]

I agree completely.  What bothers me too is that the CDC recommendation for 7-9 hours of sleep is clearly based on time in bed and so the Fitbit data you get is not comparable to the recommendations.  Basically all those "awake for 30 seconds" should not count as awake and should count as sleep.  I don't see how this isn't blindingly obvious as a flaw to the Fitbit people

I actually preferred the old non-sleep stages version as I felt it was more accurate on total sleep time

[wordstress]

Can you provide a citation for that?

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@punkynpye wrote:

Hey Everyone, all human beings are awake for a large amount of time in the night. All humans. The reason you don’t notice it is because going back to sleep erases the memories of your being awake. This is not a problem with Fitbit. If you spent hundreds on a sleep lab they would tell you the same thing. 

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[Rainking73]

You weren’t asking me, but I’ll chime in here. I am a sleep techno host.  During the night, we wake up several times and are unaware. These are called ‘arousals’ and for science are deemed 3 seconds or more. These add up. A perfectly normal 40 year old has about 6 an hour. If you are overweight, smaller airway, have pain, restless legs, stressed, or a myriad of other conditions this number is no doubt higher. These numbers add up. Now Fitbit may not be a 100% accurate as our heart rate can elevate for other reasons during sleep. 

[SandGirl]

Thank you Rainking.

I am 46 and actually a tiny bit below my normal weight, I get in over 20K steps a day, lift weights 4 days a week and eat healthy and all blood results are perfect, I suppose I will just stop worrying about all the awakes, some night I only have 17-20 where others I have up to 35 or more.  Thanks again!

[Rainking73]

Biggest thing that jumps out for me there .... 46 years old. I’m right in that ball park myself. Women are age seem to have worse sleep until we are out of menopause. Meaning we wake up more often. The upside, we have slow wave sleep way longer than men! And that’s what keeps us recovering and recouping! Thank evolution for that! Maybe that’s why we live longer! 

[Brandyleigh35]

YES!  I totally agree with this!  I honestly think this sleep tracker is stressing me out more then just sleeping normally!  It says I'm awake pretty consistently an hour or more every night!  I know I wake up a bit, restlessly repositioning etc, but not fully awake.  I've even been going to bed earlier trying to offset this and its not helping and honestly making me a little crazy!   Also my company has challenges we can join. I've been doing a sleep diary and I have to get 7 hours of sleep a night.  With the awake time deducted ever day its showing me sleeping some times less then 6.5 hours!  I go to bed at 10 and sleep until 7 most nights thats 9 hours! But its showing like 7.40 etc, and I can't earn the points for my team! Please fix this!  I thought this was going to make me sleep better, not stress me out more!  

[BobbyMcIdiot]

Yep. This annoys me too. Supposedly I was awake for almost a solid hour between 23:15 and 00:15 last night. I certainly wasn’t. I went to sleep at 22:35 and slept through. I get the whole micro-wake/arousal thing - but awake for an hour without noticing? I call bull. I can believe I might’ve been sleeping lightly and tossing and turning, but awake? I simply wasn’t.