Has Fitbit helped you to sleep better?

[MatthewFitbit]

Calling all Fitbit users! Has Fitbit helped you sleep better? If you have a slumber story to tell, let us know!

[SunsetRunner]

Yes it make me set a goal of how many hours I should be sleeping to have enough energy the next day 

some days I have to go to bed earlier to reach my goal 

when I wake up too early I force myself to lay there until I fall back asleep

[F.Fletch]

One of the biggest sleep assists from Fitbit isn't the tracking... It's the "Dude, go to bed" reminder from the app!

Another assist is that when I know I came up short on sleep one night, I'll work extra hard to hit my target the next... Fitbit has helped me break those strings of staying up too late.

I've had a sleep study. And no, a $150 device isn't going to give you the same data...

BUT  It's just as good as the gas gauge on my car. I don't know how many gallons of gas are in there at any time, but I have a very good idea of my approximate range and when I need to get gas. 🙂

VERY pleased with the Charge3 so far.

[Charlesnester]

I think you need to sleep 6-8 hours per day to have enough energy for the next day. The sleeping data is available in Fitbit for your sleeping.

[Artemix]

I would love if the Fibit integrated a smart alarm clock that would wake me up during a window of 'light sleep'. Because of a random selected alarm time right now, sleep inertia is likely to occur. 

Instead of monitoring all night, one could monitor only 30 minutes before the designated wake up time to detect the 'light sleep' phase and wake the user up during the best cycle. You would be improving so many lives!! I will be forever thankful 🙂

[rootinjesus]

Yes it has!  I thanked for that! It does track of my sleep and remember the part i woke up and i checked time. After waking up, i checked Fitbit log of sleep, it was accurate that time i woke up in middle of night.  It helps me breathing in and out to relax me and practice to sleep in and it does.  Yes Fitbit does help me.

[BruceM]

Perhaps my Fitbit has helped me sleep better by identifying what helps me sleep. I'm 76 and have had my Fitbit One for more than 6 years. I've always been a "morning person" and when I got it I woke at about 5 AM. and got about 5 hours sleep every night. I had been doing that for decades.

I started comparing my activity and sleep and discovered that when I was very active I slept longer. I'm older now and average about 20,000 steps/day and I'm averaging about 6 1/2 hours now. So, I'll stay active. It works!

[JungleGymJam]

I'm noticing a gradual improvement thanks to FitBit. Of course, life can get in the way of scheduled bedtimes, especially at the end of my kiddo's school year. 

But just knowing the watch makes me accountable for how I spend my time that's available for sleep has me making better decisions - less gadget use in the hour before bedtime, including TV. More patience to let myself fall back asleep when I wake up in the middle of the night instead of firing up the laptop and surfing the web. 

When I wake up in the middle of the night, I make my decision to stay relaxed in bed knowing I'd rather see little red spikes on my graph the next morning than a long gray bar that shows a continuous 2-3 hour stretch not recognized as sleep - or just as bad - 2 separate, pathetically short, little sleep bar graphs that would come from spending a long time out of bed in the middle of the night. 

My average length of sleep per night was gradually increasing until I encountered some of those fairly busy weeknight evenings that go with the start of summer - and early mornings for work that won't budge if I want to stick to my fitness routine. 

[philchenevert]

Yes and Wow!  I am very impressed with my Fitbit and it's ability to assess my sleep quality as well as quantity.  The recent update has added a huge depth of information that will be useful to me and my sleep specialist (I have sleep apena) when I see her later this month.  I admit to just discovering the amazing information available to me from my Fitbit, having put it on the night stand up until 8 days ago thinking that I didn't want to know how many hours I 'slept' since that was all it gave me.  Yeah I know, really dumb since I have been worried about my daytime sleepiness again for many months and angling to get another sleep test done even though I woujld have to pay for it.   To summarize, my Fitbit is amazing and I am doing a test now of amassing sleep data from my Fitbit for 2 weeks, then shaving my beard to see if that is interfering with my CPAP mask pressure and doing another 2 weeks.  Thanks to Fitbit, this is possible for free !    Oh, I should note that it is helping me go to bed earlier!!!  

[hedonistacal]

I found that sometimes I only think I have slept badly, I wake feeling unrested and check my fitbit and it says I got a good night sleep, so I ignore that immediate feeling and get on with my day.

Essentially my 'poor sleep' is psychosomatic 🙂

[JlTDC3]

Fitbit has helped me be aware of less than enough sleep.  There is no "Fix" for that.  When is the Sleep Score with SP02 going to be available?  

[philchenevert]

Oh, but there is definitely a 'fix' for less than adequate sleep.  It is called sleep hygiene: turning off electronics in the bedroom and leaving our phones outside, making it the place for sleep and sex only, going to bed when the first sleepy urge hits instead of putting it off, not staring at blue light of our monitors or phones(which messes up our circidian rhythm) and not drinking caffeine after noon.   sleep is sooo critical to every major organ and our minds and yet we think we can get by with less than enough (7 to 8 hours a night).   It isn't easy of course, but the result of getting more real sleep is just wonderful.  

[JlTDC3]

Oh, but all of the above.....and, I wear blue light filters starting at dusk, have a BT routine, never make it to the 6:00 AM alarm. No coffee after 10:00 AM, don’t drink alcohol. Fall asleep like clock work. Then.....wake up to pee, then I’m up, averaging 4+ hours some weeks 5+ hours some weeks, never 6 since versa was released. Called maintenance insomnia. 67, still work full time. On Tuesday-Thursday, after getting my 10k steps, have HIIT class at 5:30, log about 150 minutes of activity, and end day with 15,000 + steps, are my best sleep days. So, thanks for the reply, and the tips, I do them all, plus some. If you got more ideas, pass along please. Oh, BMI of 30.5 (working on it). As well, colorectal cancer in 2016, 2nd surgery in 2017, tore it all lose with pneumonia in 2018, and had to get put back together again. Type 2 Diabetic, with Heart murmur. Other than that I’m in great shape. Oh, did I mention enlarged prostrate? Thanks again. Good to know someone saw it. That was my first participation in community!



Joe Lansdown
Sent from my iPhone

[philchenevert]

Wow Joe, you are WAY ahead of me in doing what is good for sleep and your
bedtime routine is faultless. And all of your exercise is amazing!. Sorry
to hear about the maintenance insomnia. That is tough. I don't have this
and am very grateful. I have been listening to Why We Sleep by Matthew
Walker and learned a lot about why sleep is so essential to good health.
His chapter on insomnia is scary indeed.
anyway, the only thing he mentioned was that the sleep experts now
recommend Cognative Behavioral therapy as the first and most helpful
approach with insomnia. It works better than medication and there is
little rebound effect, meaning it keeps on working whereas insomnia comes
back when mediation is stopped.

HIIT?! wow I am impressed. Best of luck in increasing your sleepy time,
you deserve it.
(Note that I just woke up at 2:30 am today for some reason. go figure)

--

*Phil Chenevert*
*Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. **Dalai Lama*

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[philchenevert]

I have been using my Fitbit to chart my sleep for about a month now.  Great discovery!  I have sleep apnea and visited my Sleep Doctor yesterday to check how I'm doing.  My CPAP machine of course records how long I use the machine and how many Apnea episodes I have, but when I showed him the fabulous bar graph that my FitBit produced, with deep, light, REM and awake across the night, he was very impressed.  My CPAP machine gave him some general and vague data, but my FitBit gave explicit data on each night.  He did not know this was possible with a wrist device and was very very impressed. 

Just want to pass on the the people developing the sleep app for FitBit that they have done a great job especially with the latest update.  The only minor thing missing is sleep efficiency (time in bed divided by time asleep) but I can figure that out myself.  Keep u p the great work; I love it.  (Now if a Dream interpretation app could be built in .......)    

[JlTDC3]

Hey Base Runner! Just imagine how much more useful the fit bit will be when they provide the update for Sleep Score. This will turn on the SPO2 monitor for the Versa, as well as the Fit Bit Charge 3. That way, you can see if your oxygen saturation drops overnight. Hmmm. Wonder if that is important?

Good thing that you discovered this sleep apnea condition.

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

[adzify106]

As a firefighter I struggled with managing my shifts and getting sufficient rest.

With the Fitbit Ionic I was able to collect good data, the weekly average feature was really good at helping me identify when I needed to catchup and how much I needed to catchup.  I felt like I was getting more rest (even if it wasn't regular) with my health and fitness in general improving.  I felt like I was recovering from shiftwork faster and had more energy.

Now that this feature has been removed and replaced by a 'score' I won't be able to track my weekly average anymore.  It could in fact be detrimental, I don't know how many hours a score corresponds to, is a score of 1 = 1 hour?   I dont understand why Fitbit would remove the info as the data is still being logged, surely it could be shown side-by-side?  Or at least give us some control?  Rather than just deciding what data users need or don't need, make the info an option and put it in the Settings for us to decide what we do or don't want to see.  I love how Fitbit just removed it.  The info displayed is just a number on a screen, how do you know how many people look at it.  You have no way to survey the human eye, there is no function to check how people were using the data, you just removed it.

[philchenevert]

Hmmm. I use the Charge2 and it still has the data displayed, not just a
score. Perhaps the Ionic is set up a differnt way?

--

*Phil Chenevert*
*Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. **Dalai Lama*

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[JlTDC3]

This is the 2nd time I’ve seen this. All I was interested in was the addition of FB turning on the SPO2 sensor to track OXY levels overnight. I just checked, my FB app is still showing average sleep, number of hours, and breaks it into the categories.

I’d very much not be in favor of doing away with this benefit, and get only some proprietary number that means nothing. Raw Data!

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Too many folks want just the sleep data.

Anyways – Joe

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

[GraceFirst]

Thanks, I needed to turn off the screen wake, too.

[VerifiedUser]

Yes, it sure has helped me sleep better! It has educated me on how much sleep I need to average, in order to feel my best, which is evidently 7 hours 35 min. It also has helped me in that I now know how much time I actually need to be in bed overnight in order to get that needed amount of sleep, generally 8.5-9 hours. (Which allows for time needed to initially fall asleep, restless times, and getting up to use the restroom in the night, etc.)