Why Should I Track Sleep?

[SunsetRunner]

I'm not trying to be  jerk. What are the advantages of tracking sleep? The main reason I'm asking is that I find it annoying to wear my Charge HR all night. But if there is a strong reason to wear it then I can try to get used to it.

[dia]

So you see if you are truly getting a good night's sleep. It's amazing how restless sleep can be. If you see you aren't sleeping soundly, you can make changes. My doctor suggested I track my sleep. Studies show that lack of sleep takes years off your life. 

[rickpags53]

johnvic,

First, you're not a jerk, we'll let you know if you are, ha !

Welcome to the FitBit Community!  You will find a lot of nice, helpful people here.

I agree with Dia and what she said.

"Good sleep", long, non-restless sleep with REM periods allows your body to heal and rebuild itself.

Heck, just Google search phrases like "quality of sleep", "benefits of a good night's sleep", etc.

You'll get a ton of useful hits to read, much better than I can do here.

Many episodes of "restlessness" during the night can point to more important issues like restless leg syndrome and sleep apniea.

I personally find it no problem wearing the little Charge HR while I'm sleeping and I am personally amazed how accurate the HR is with tracking my sleep patterns.

Your mileage may vary.

I'd say just give it a try for a while and see for yourself.

Good Luck,

Rick

[dia]

Well, if you sleep like a baby for 7+ hours every night, I guess you don't need to be concerned about tracking your sleep. Does this describe you?  

[SunsetRunner]

Definately not!

[Ukase · Accepted solution]

I get what you're saying. Honestly, the only reason I wear it at night is so I won't forget to put it on in the morning. 

Some people have pretty lousy sleep. The sleep monitoring can help them see if there's something they need to address. I have actually read that it helped someome have some disorder diagnosed, but I can't remember the details. 

If you don't like wearing it when you sleep - take it off. It's not like seeing the results of 14 restless moments the next day will help you get fewer restless moments the next time you go to sleep.  

[Sheebo]

I know for me, i just changed shifts at work and i now work nights and im trying to adapt to sleeping during the day. Being able to track my sleep helps because if i see i was really restless I can think back and see if i had too much caffeine or forgot to eat or something that was causing it. Just helps me adjust my own schedule a bit....personal preferences.

[cbess]

It may also be a tell for disease later on. With long term sleep trends... you can understand depression or another illness by subsequent changes in sleep patterns. There are lots of interesting things we can learn and we are just scratching the tip with what we will be able to find out. 

[phlipp]

In addition to indicating restlessness and duration, perhaps tracking sleep is also relevant to Fitbit's calculation of resting pulse (partly reflecting pulse around waking time, but not that simple I gather)? Does it make much difference to that if you don't wear it at night? I don't find it a hassle and as commented by others, I think the pulse pattern data over night also point to overall fitness/wellness/comfort. 

[Yuriy]

Hi !!! Have a look here (https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Requests/More-functional-sleep-data-analysis/idi-p/1195744). Here are more reasons to track you sleep.

[Vicki_Thomas]

I have sleep apnea. My Dr liked it at my last visit that many tracker had hourly information about my movements.

[vrDrew]

When I got my Charge HR, I hadn't even considered that it could be used to monitor sleep. And certainly hadn't given any thought at all to why you would want to. And like the OP, I at first found it a little uncomfortable to have something unaccustomed on my wrist as I settled down to sleep.

After having the Charge HR for a few months, I'm increasingly aware of the value of sleep tracking as part of an overall fitness/lifestyle program.

A doctor once told me: Diet; exercise; and sleep can be thought of as the three legs of a stool that supports health. Too much, too little, or the wrong kind of any of the three can cause serious problems. And I was not doing very well with sleep.

Over the course of a lifetime I'd developed some bad habits when it came to sleep. Caffeine in the late evening hours; too many late night sessions in front of the computer screen; eating too late at night; etc. I  was averaging just over 4.5 hours a night; sometimes supplementing this with an accidental nap.

Aware of the problem, I made a concerted effort to improve. Cut out caffeine in the evening. Set a pre-bed routine (contacts, teeth cleaning, etc.). Set a firm bed-time. Limit my screen-time. And most importantly - recognize that if I woke in the very early pre-dawn hours, that it was possible to get back to sleep. I'm now usually getting 6.5 pretty much uninterrupted hours a night. Short of my goal, but still a vast improvement over where I was a couple of months ago. My resting HR has declined, I feel better. And I no longer nod off on the couch unintentionally.

I don't know that I'll monitor my sleep for the rest of my life. But as I work on improving my overall health and fitness - sleep monitoring is going to remain a big part of my plan.

[cbess]

This is a great post. Thank you, and I think everyone can take away
something positive. The Fitbit may mean something different for each person
out there.

Congrats on the change and cheers to a healthier lifestyle.

[Alex111]

As it is recommended that we get between 6-8 hrs sleep per night, the tracker is ideal for ensuring you know exactly how much sleep you are actually getting. By wearing the tracker, you will find out and subsequently be able to change your sleep pattern if necessary. Don't forget there are also many benefits about getting a good nights sleep. It is vital for your body to restore itself. Even if you are not so keen on wearing the tracker to bed, like I was, just try it and find out exactly what you are sleeping like. Now I have tried it, I wear it every night.

[SouthernDad]

I'm a gadget person.  I'm also very analytical.  When I first started tracking sleep, I discovered that I was a restless sleeper, which explained why I do not always wake up feeling refreshed and ready to go in the mornings.  Tracking sleep also lets me be more aware of when I'm not getting enough sleep.  An example is that last night, I only got 4:43 of sleep.  Of that time, I was awake twice and restless seven times for a total of 21 minutes awake/restless.  

Having this data really shows me that maybe I need to ease up on drinking so much water as those two awake times were bathroom trips.  In addition, I need to get to bed earlier and turn off the television.  Once you see it in a chart, it changes your perspective a bit.  Sort of like our step charts.  We all want solid blocks of days that are green with a star.

[BWright1175]

I rarely (maybe once every week or two) look at my sleep logs.

The reason I wear my Charge HR at night is because of the silent alarm feature.  Honestly, it's one of my favorite features of the device.  Not only does it "gently" wake me up in the morning, it also doesn't wake up my wife. 😄

I have one set for 4:30 am, and a backup set for 4:35 am.... and just in case the battery dies overnight, I have an alarm on my phone set for 4:40 am.

[brightsidelife]

This has been the most useful aspect of fitbit for me, it helped me to see why I woke up tired every morning. I assumed I was getting enough sleep, just poor quality. But once fitbit started to log it - I discovered I was only getting between 5-6.5hrs each night. The quality was fine, I just wasn't going to be early enough!

And I love the vibrating alarms - I have a plethora of the set thruout the day as reminders aswell. I lost my fitbit for few days, and tried to wear a regular watch in the interm. The time didn't glow in the dark, and the alarm was loud (not vibrating) and only one per day. Lucky for me, I found my fitbit again!

[LadyDee]

Sleep tracking is a plesent surprise for me since getting my fitbit less than a month now. I always wondered why I felt tired in the morning, I realise I'm restless a lot.  While I may be in bed for 8 hours, I'm only getting 6 - 6.5 hours of sleep.

[fiveghz]

Funny you should mention this.  I did not buy the fitbit for STEP tracking, since I was already doing that on my iPhone.  I bought it specifically for SLEEP tracking because I bought a new bed and I wanted a quantitative way to see the difference.

[Scyllafirefox]

Tracking our sleep is the only answer why we are so grumpy when we wake up evert morning....Its because we have not enough sleep...