Please show me your sleep pattern (both good and poor sleepers)

[111mastermind]

I got my Fitbit Surge 6 days ago. I set it to sensitive. The sleep pattern confirmed mine, and my husband's suspicions, that I have very poor sleep. Sleep efficiency 61%, and cycle length (also confirmed with a different mobile app) is only 60 mins not the usual 90 mins. I 'need' about 10-11 hours sleep to feel half-way decent. With 10 hrs sleep I get about 6 hrs. With 8-9 hrs sleep (my usual weekday allowance) I get about 5 hrs. My husband always complains that my restless sleep causes him lost sleep too 😞 (I say to him imagine how I feel!). I am usually fatigued all day and have trouble getting up in the morning and am struggling to maintain work function. I'm glad I got my Fitbit so I have proof of what is happening.

I was tested for sleep apnoea some years ago and had borderline/mild apnoea. I lost 70 lbs (30 kg) and then got retested and the apnoea had disappeared (good because I didn't tolerate the CPAP at all).

I would like to know what a 'normal' sleep pattern looks like and what another poor sleeper looks like so I can show my GP and get referred. Is there a specific kind of sleep study she can request other than for sleep apnoea?

I have added 2 screenshots of my usual sleep pattern, if some of you could add yours with a brief comment on if you sleep well or not, that would help me gather evidence for my GP appointment. TIA.

[Steven85]

I've got it set to 'sensitive'. Never had a sleep study.

I'm tired 😞

[shwaldman]

wow - I am sorry for what you are going through. I can imagine you are tired. What are your habits for your sleep environment - Caffiene, bed, light, noise, temperature, etc?

[Steven85]

I drink coffee at the moment (3 cups early in the day). I went completely off it for a while but it didn't change anything.

It's dark and quiet where we live.

Temperatures a strange one.... I sometimes wake up freezing in the middle of the night. The room isn't cold though.

I've mentioned to the doctor i dont sleep well and i use my fitbit to track sleep. He doesn't think fitbit data is any good though so just refused to look at it.

I've tried various over the counter sleep aids. They usually just make things worse - Melatonin/5HTP/Antihistamines

I'm not overweight and I don't snore so don't particularly suspect sleep apnea...but I do occasionally jolt awake out of breath. It's more of a falling sensation which I think is fairly common?

[ErickFitbit]

@Steven85 I recommend trying the sleep sensitivity setting to "Normal" and giving that a try for a night to see the difference. Let me know what you end up seeing.

[801]

                                      What is your sleep setting? Sensitive or normal?

[Steven85]

I feel pretty terrible when I wake up and generally fatigued all the time.

From memory, it looked a bit better when I had it set to normal but I didn't really feel any better.

One thing that makes my sleep worse is eating dinner late at night. I'm more restless when I do that.

The cats won't go near me when I sleep. I guess I'm too fidgety. They (2) sometimes sleep on my wife as she is a better sleeper.

[shwaldman]

I completely agree. I am not sure why anyone would use the normal setting. It does not show anything. I go from 99-100% on normal to 60-80% on sensitive. I need to figure out how to improve my sleep habits and using the normal setting just sweeps the problem under the rug. 

[Meifyrt]

hi, there. Glad to know I'm not alone.

I have tried "normal" mode before when I bought this Fitbit Charge 2. The sleep efficiency was nearly 99% every day. Then I changed to "sensitive", you can see how frustrated I have been with the stats. Last night, I switched to "normal" again. Wow, suddenly I had a very healthy sleep!

However, I have to point out that the normal mode is so insensitive that I actually go to bed at least after 12!

[801]

I feel kinda dumb for saying this but I don't know how to add my charts to a message. can anyone help me?

[Jennyj1966]

How do you set to sensitive? Only got my fitbit yesterday so still learning. I don't  think I sleep too well. Set on normal last night my readings showed 2 times awake and 16 restless but I would like to monitor better

[ErickFitbit]

@Jennyj1966 To change your setting in the Fitbit app for iOS or Windows 10, go to Account > Advanced Settings > Sleep Sensitivity. To change your setting in the fitbit.com dashboard, go to Settings > Devices > scroll down to Sleep Tracking.

[Jennyj1966]

Thanks for your help. Just changed it.

[shwaldman]

Is there a way to download sleep data to csv file? I am not a premium payer, but would like to just consolidate this sleep data into a form I can review from the past years. It is a time-consuming task to pull the numbers day-by-day. 

[SunsetRunner]

How old is your mattress?  My sister tossed and turned and slept very poorly until she splurged on an icomfort mattress-it's a hybrid of tempurpedic and coils.  She did this after sleeping on my tempurpedic mattress and woke up refreshed and realized she didn't wake up once or even chang positions in the night.  I got my tempurpedic because of sleep issues and I've slept thru the night since.   I had a cousin come for a visit and we gave her my sisters room.  Jody asked specific questions about the mattress because she slept thru the night and in that bed, (she has ankylosing spondylotis and has considerable pain-this mattress offered great support without creating pressure points).  

[SunsetRunner]

@Daggnar    HOw do you feel in the morning?  If you feel refreshed and ready for the day, then you are getting good sleep.

[Suntzu]

I just came across this thread in search of what other people's sleep reports might look like.  Very interesting!  Attached are my most recent reports.  I will admit that I have PTSD and this is while on medications to help me sleep.  Although I'm having less dreams I'm still only sleeping about 4 hours but it's an improvement from about 2.5 hours.  FYI my setting is set to sensitive...  good luck to all getting more Zzzz's

[Jennyj1966]

When I had mine set to sensitive sleep was showing up at around 3hrs on normal it tends to be between 6 and 7 hours. I usually wake up at least twice a night and have a few restless periods. 

Hope you get your sleep pattern sorted, it is not good if you are having bad nights like that and feeling tired when you wake up.

[Roadragemustang]

I have the same problem on weekends I sleep 12 hours to get 6

It's really starting to catch up with me

[Rashboots]

I've had my fitbit set on sensitive for a while now after finding the normal setting too inaccurate.

The sensitive setting surely matches how I FEEL when I wake up (tired and not refreshed in the slightest) but I think it's more on the extreme end of the spectrum.

I do however know that my fiance has started to snore really loudly, so I wonder if this is attributing to my tiredness and also my poor sleep quality as shown below, but it's not actually waking me up. The only reason I know he snores loudly is because before I go to sleep I have to elbow him a few times to get him to stop (poor guy!).

Excuse Sunday's poor sleep... I ended up having people round for drinks which led to an allnighter, then dragging myself to bed at 6.30am, then all day snoozing...

[Panrich]

Looking for some pointers. I got a fitbit blaze yesterday . My wife has had a charge 2 since before Christmas and she has become obsessed with her sleep patterns and she actually encouraged me to get the fitbit myself. Her pattern on normal sensitivity is always very disturbed with many awake and restless moments during the night and rarely a gap of more than about an hour. Lots of red and blue lines everywhere.

However, I woke up this morning with my new blaze reporting 6 hrs 58mins asleep, 0 times awake and 2 times restless (3 mins). Now I know that I sleep better than my wife, but that seems totally strange as we share a bed. Is there a sensitivity difference between the Charge 2 and the Blaze? Should I be using the sensitive setting? I'd hate to see my wifes graph if she changed to the more sensitive setting.

I think I'll monitor for a little while to see if this was an anomaly and then we might swap devices for a night to see if it follows the device.