Sleep Analysis

Post Reply New Topic

Sleep is very important for Aspies. We encounter a very high degree of stress and sleeps helps us restore our mind. It helps to reset us. My wife bought me a Fitbit for Christmas which has the ability to monitor sleep cycles. So I have 21 days of data and thought I would analyze the results.

The Fitbit breaks sleep cycle into Light sleep, REM sleep, Deep sleep and Awake time. It excludes Awake time in determining total sleep time.

This web article breaks down sleep cycle into Stage 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 [REM] sleep.
How Much Deep, Light, and REM Sleep Do You Need?
Stage 1 & 2 would correspond to Light sleep. Stage 3 & 4 would correspond to Deep sleep.
________________________________

So my first perception is Total Sleep time. When I go to bed at midnight and wake up at 8 AM, I consider that I received 8 hours of sleep. But Fitbit doesn't. It has a category called Awake time. For me that amounts to 56.2 minutes per night. Fitbit does not count this as sleep. Now I can understand that I might take a couple potty breaks during the night, perhaps around 10 minutes total. But I suspect this awake time also includes Stage 1 Very Light Sleep category.

So if you add my Fitbit sleep time which averages 386.3 minutes per night and add in the Fitbit awake time, you come to 442.5 minutes per night, which is about 7.4 hours per night. That makes sense to me. Not quite 8 hours per night but close.
_________________________

So the most important element of the sleep cycle is called Deep Sleep (Stage 3 and 4) sleep. I am averaging 54.1 minutes per night.

In stage 3, you enter deep sleep, and stage 4 is the deepest sleep stage. During deep sleep, your breathing, heartbeat, body temperature, and brain waves reach their lowest levels. Your muscles are extremely relaxed, and you are most difficult to rouse.

Stage 4 is known as the healing stage, when tissue growth and repair take place, important hormones are released to do their jobs, and cellular energy is restored.

In healthy adults, about 13 to 23 percent of your sleep is deep sleep. So if you sleep for 8 hours a night, that’s roughly 62 to 110 minutes.

However, as you get older you require less deep sleep.

During deep sleep, memories are consolidated, learning and emotions process, physical recovery takes place, blood sugar levels and metabolism balance out, your immune system is energized, and your brain detoxifies.

Without deep sleep, these functions cannot take place and the symptoms of sleep deprivation kick in.

On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be any such thing as too much deep sleep.

So 54.1 minutes of deep sleep will probably fall into the healthy range considering that I am 70 years old.
________________________________

Another category is called REM sleep. I am averaging 85.1 minutes per night.

Your first REM cycle of the night begins about 90 minutes after you fall asleep and recurs every 90 minutes. Your eyes move around quickly behind your eyelids and your brainwaves look similar to those of someone who is awake. Your breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure rise to near-waking levels.

REM sleep, often referred to as stage 5, is when you are most likely to dream.

Your arms and legs become temporarily paralyzed during this stage to prevent you from physically acting out your dreams.

Although there is no official consensus on how much REM sleep you should get, dreaming is most common during this stage and experts believe that dreaming helps you process emotions and solidify certain memories.

For most adults, REM takes up about 20 to 25 percent of sleep, and this seems to be healthy during average sleep cycles. If people get excessive amounts of REM, however, they may be more likely to suffer from depression.

So if one gets 8 hours of sleep per night, REM sleep should be within the range of 96 to 120 minutes of REM sleep. It sounds like I am in the right ballpark there. I am definitely not getting excessive REM sleep.
__________________________

For those with Fitbits with sleep tracking capability - How is your sleep cycles?

Of course it’s long known that what you eat affects your sleep. But exactly which foods? Is not always clear.

Some studies show certain food’s natural Melatonin has a positive effect on sleep.

Melatonin is very good for resetting your internal clock. Over my life I have went on many business trips. In many I crossed 3 or 4 time zones at once. This really messes up your internal clock. So I took melatonin and was good to go the next morning.

My sleep is garbage. Last night I woke up 6 times, the night before at least 8 times. I have always wanted to try a sleep tracker so I can get a graph showing just how poor my sleep really is to show someone when they ask why I am tired. I have several reasons that my sleep quality is so poor. One is that I keep having to wake up to pee, 2nd is that I can't regulate my body temperature and need like 10 blankets or more to sleep with, 3rd is OCD, repetitive thoughts and 4th would be my sensory processing issues related to my autism. I have taken an unfathomable number of sleeping medications over the last 14 years in addition to many behavioral modifications. It is a nightly battle to get sleep.

^^^^ My sleep isn't great either, though not as troubled as yours, Noca. I know that lack of good sleep complicates my health problems, which of course makes it even more difficult to sleep. Having my life restricted so much by the broken ankle has resulted in more time and opportunity for sleeping and I do believe it has improved somewhat.

I do not understand how a Fitbit can tell you what is happening when you sleep.

Yeah chronic pain, mood, anxiety is all so much worse if I don't get enough sleep. I think the fitbit interprets your movements in bed as whether or not you are sleeping. One problem with it is there doesn't appear to be standardization and I saw one review where the person wore 4 different sleep trackers and they gave 4 different results for the same night of sleep lol. I don't know how accurate they actually are.

According to an article by Husain Sumra:

Fitbit's Sleep Stages feature is so ahead of everyone else out there that every time a new wearable adds sleep tracking, we at Wareable use a Fitbit as the gold standard to compare against. For good reason too, as Fitbit has tested its sleep tracking up against polysomnography technicians - essentially the best way to track sleep - and found it was 69% accurate. It might not sound that high, but that number is very good by non-EEG standards.

Source: Charged Up: Sleep tracking has become Fitbit's most defining feature

I noticed in another article that the Fitbit should be worn on the dominant hand. I am right handed and wearing it on my left hand. So maybe I should switch and see if it make and difference.

Let us know, jimmym. I took a look at the Fitbit website. Seems like it is mostly for exercise. Still, might consider if a biofeedback tool could be used to improve sleep.

Not all Fitbits have the sleep tracking capability.

Well a little time has passed and I thought I would revisit the sleep analysis with a little more data.

Deep Sleep is the most important because during deep sleep, memories are consolidated, learning and emotions process, physical recovery takes place, blood sugar levels and metabolism balance out, your immune system is energized, and your brain detoxifies. {The initial analysis showed that I averaged 54.1 minutes of deep sleep, This would generally fall into the healthy range considering that I am 70 years old.]

The next category in terms of importance is REM sleep. Although there is no official consensus on how much REM sleep you should get, dreaming is most common during this stage and experts believe that dreaming helps you process emotions and solidify certain memories. [The initial analysis showed that I was averaging 85.1 minutes per night which is within the normal range.]

So looking over my latest sleep data, what conclusions might I draw?

Well first off, it is probably very important that I take more detailed notes.

* Eight of nine instances where my deep sleep was above 85 minutes correlated to days associated with a greater stress load. These were days when I was sick with a cold, hosting visitors and in one case dealing with a major flood event. This makes sense because my body is spending more time repairing the stress damage that occurred during the day.

* I am a night owl. Generally I go to bed around midnight. So how does going to bed earlier or later affect the amount of deep sleep I receive each night?
Two nights when I went to bed 1 1/2 to 2 hours later than normal (and with little exercise during the daytime) produced an average of 18 minutes deep sleep. [I suspect moderate exercise normalizes sleep patterns.]
When I went to bed 1 hour or more earlier than normal, I averaged 68.18 minutes deep sleep.
When I went to bed 1 1/2 to 2 hours earlier than normal, I averaged 70.6 minutes deep sleep.
So if you want to get more deep sleep generally don't stay up too late.

* As far as REM sleep, I didn't see any trends. There was one anomaly. On one night I had 34 minutes of deep sleep and 20 minutes of REM sleep. This was rather unusual numbers. On that night I went to bed almost an hour and a half earlier than normal but apparently I woke at 5 am. Over 75% of my sleep that night was in the Light Sleep phase which is abnormal.

Thank you jimmy m. I find this quite interesting.