Sleep and Getting to REM

[G2EWS]

Hi All,

Been a fitbit user for many years. The main reason being I needed to monitor my sleep and attempt to understand what causes me a bad night.

After much research and reading the results of many tests and te reports, the general opinion is the average person gets to REM sleep in about 90 minutes. I am sure you have all discovered that REM sleep is critical, without it we don't recover. You only need to be in REM for seconds to get this benefit, but the damage of not getting there is cumulative. 

I rarely get there and sometimes it can be several weeks before it happens. The results are exhaustion.

What I would like from fitbit is the ability to automatically monitor for REM. That is, the graph will show if we get to and beyond 90 minutes. Not sure if this is possible or if fitbit staff monitor this forum, but I think for people like me who suffer, this would be very useful.

Best regards

Chris

[SunsetRunner]

Awesome idea @G2EWS 

Feel free to add your suggestion to the subforum URL: Feature Requests where users can vote, add comments with the possibility of being picked up by the developers to integrate the functionality.

[SunsetRunner]

@G2EWS That is really interesting. I know about REM and sleep cycles, except I was convinced every person had different cycle length. if as you say REM is attainable in 90 min it should be less hard to integrate into sleep log. 

I would recommend doing as @SunsetRunner is suggesting and post in Feature Requests if you have not done it already.

Happy sleeping!

[G2EWS]

Hi Sebastien, Many thanks for your comment. Yes, you are correct, everyone does have different lengths of time to get to REM. But after much research on the subject it would seem that the average time to get there is 90 minutes. It certainly seems to be so for me as well. I did post in Feature Requests as well. Best regards Chris

[GisselleM]

@G2EWS I also believe you have a really good suggestion, I'm glad you submitted it through our Ideas bord, why don't you share the link to your suggestion here so all of us can vote! 🙂

[SunsetRunner]

@G2EWS, as @G2EWS said that is a really good suggestion, I will look for it in the suggestion board but the link would make it easier.

[elleyalater]

if you dream you are in Rapid eye movent ...REM.  It is luke a dogs paw when they dream...ugh i think a ft bit that tells you when you are in the deep sleep portion should be left to sleep labs.  Basing this on the fact that my fitbit says I do not sleep but 2 hours a night

[elleyalater]

You ever recover lost sleep REM OR OTHERWISE. Why rely so heavily on a wrist watch...even though I have one. And got it to monitor my awake vs calm periods, Fit bit is not giving you a sleep study it is more of a movement study . If is on your arm!,, The way to find out your Rem sleep is not possible from a Fitbit peridot
A Fitb . EEGS MONITOR SLEEP and the leads are are on your head and your respirations are monitored by. person. They monitor your bite to see if a protrusion cause apnea If any one has a Fitbit that does that accurately well they may have to make a band big enough for your head. What I am saying is some people wake up in the night because of sleep apnea .where you stop breathing and the kick start yourself back, restless legs, to much sleep in the day...exercise in the night.n They do nap studies in some places..to see if that is the cause..or narcoleptic...but I think u would know that. Plain and simple a Fitbit is around the wrong area to monitor waves. It is in a place to monitor movement.period. A study is not a million bucks ...tell your docs your concern if you feel off . If it is just for your own info, do it if you want to know.

[elleyalater]

That all said keep trying to I iron. Rain waves from your hand.

[G2EWS]

Hi Elleyalater,

Having looked very deeply into sleep and what it does and doesn't do, you will be surprised to learn that fitbit gives you an excellent understanding of how much sleep you get.

Of course it is not as good as going to a sleep clinic, but I don't have the time to do that 'every' day!

What I discovered very early on is that I can tell my midday if I have slept well. If I then check my fitbit I find that I have had over 90 minutes of sleep, the recommended amount needed to get to REM. Meaning it must be doing a very good job. If I feel tired and then check I find I have not managed a 90 minute session.

If you suffer with poor sleep, give it a try. Monitor your sleep, see how you feel later in the day then check your fitbit data.

Best regards

Chris

[G2EWS]

A link to my feature request as asked for:

Graph to show when we get to REM

Regards

Chris

[jrose1982]

I don't understand... How do you know you're not getting to REM?

By "have not managed a 90 minute session" does that mean FitBit says you slept less than 90 minutes throughout the whole night?  Or that you don't have a 90 minute "Asleep" block on your graph?

That said, I don't understand what you're asking for either.  FitBit can't actually tell if you're in REM, it can only tell if you move or not.  Are you asking for it to highlight blocks of 90 minutes without movement or something like that?

[Hanumani]

Hi Chris.  I have the same issue of poor sleep.  I just bought a Fitbit HR for the sleep & heart rate tracking and I have to say I am very dissappointed.  I already have an iphone app called Sleep Cycle which shows when you are awake, asleep and in deep sleep and it seems to be much more accurate in tracking than the Fitbit.   I really thought that the Fitbit, costing lots of money, being attached to my wrist and monitoring heart rate as well would give a lot more info than a line graph!

[emili]

and this is where I am getting lost. the HR monitor is what tells it that you are asleep- meaning you have no movement and your HR is at the lowest point within a specified period of time. I always knew - probably incorrectly- that REM is measured by brain activity not HR. Fitbit is recording your movement through out the night and also monitoring your heart rate. It knows that you are asleep because even with some movement your HR doesn't go above the lowest point in the specified time. When it does, it marks you awake. when you settle back down, it marks you asleep and so on. I guess I don't know how it will track REM sleep through your wrist. What am I missing- I am really asking- I can't sleep most notes either so this is very interesting to me.

[jrose1982]

I don't think Fitbit uses heart rate to determine sleep.  I could be wrong, but everything I've seen suggests they use the same algorithms for all their devices.  So the ones with heart rate monitors track sleep the same as the ones without.  I've seen a lot of complaints about this because the sleep monitoring could probably be more accurate if heart rate was part of the equation and it's not.

The only way to detect REM is by monitoring brain waves.  Fitbit can't do it.  Other devices have been able to get respectable sleep detection results by combining movement with heartrate, temperature, and perspiration.  But even those can't detect REM.

This article has an interesting discussion about the limitations of mass-market sleep trackers:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-christopher-winter/sleep-tips_b_4792760.html

[Hanumani]

Thank you, that makes sense. I was expecting better, thinking it would be tracking heart rate with sleep and giving more information.

Sent from my iPhone

[Pimmoz]

Would be nice to have this function indeed.

REM sleep is detectable by heart rate as shown in several studies. There has been an algortihm developed for this kind of detection (just google it) via heart rate.

I'm speculating here for the the reason this has not been implemented. The HR detection is just not accurate enough to get a reliable detection for all of FitBit's consumers.

[creepingjennie]

I have the opposite problem: I enter into REM stage before my eyes even close, and stay there through most of my sleep. I have narcolepsy. 

I can sleep and sleep and sleep, but not get the repairitive sleep that I need. I have been given a prescription for Provigil, but it was too cost prohibitive to continue using. 

One interesting thing I have found with using my FitBit is that while my nightly sleep sessions only yield an average of 69% efficiency, my naps actually produce an average of 90% efficiency. However, I do find it interesting that although I have fewer periods of "restlessness," AKA REM sleep, I tend to have more instances of sleep paralysis during my naps.

We need a good balance of REM and NREM sleep in order to achieve healthy sleep. The goal is not to have a night of nearly all REM. Trust me, you don't want that.