Wearables: Are they helpful or just another source of stress? We discuss the pros and cons.
A lot of smartwatches or wearable devices now offer sleep tracking as a product feature. These primarily work by using accelerometers to track movement (which is very low during sleep) that are run through an algorithm to estimate whether you are asleep or awake.
These devices actually compare reasonably well with research assessment tools at estimating bedtime and wake-up time and how long you have slept.
But, because they tend to miss short awakenings overnight, they may overestimate sleep duration. They are also not very good at determining what stage of sleep (e.g., deep sleep, REM sleep) we are in. We would ignore these and any ‘recovery score' they provide. Use your own intuition to guide your sleep, and focus on how you feel.
Don't let your life be governed by a fictitious number on a screen.
If you do decide to use wearables, use them as a long-term monitoring tool that you can reflect on once or twice a month rather than every night. Nightly use can result in paranoia and anxiousness, leading to orthodontia, where we can over-fixate on the results it provides and become even more stressed when things aren’t perfect. They never will be. Everyone has bad nights of sleep!
We can still track our sleep without wearables or electronic recording.
I would recommend noting down in your training diary or making a spreadsheet for:
1. What time you went to bed
2. What time you woke up
3. How you are feeling today
This will provide plenty of information to examine long-term trends and determine whether adjustments to your typical sleep schedule are needed.
Take Home Points
- Wearables can do a decent enough job of recording bedtime, wake time, and duration.
- They are not so good at recording much else when it comes to sleep.
- Use wearable devices and statistics at your own risk.
- Track your sleep by how you actually feel and by noting this down in a training diary.
If you or someone you know needs sleep support, contact Sandy, who created this content and is happy to help.
Evidence-Based Research
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Miller, D.J., Sargent, C. and Roach, G.D. (2022) ‘A validation of six wearable devices for estimating sleep, heart rate and heart rate variability in healthy adults’, Sensors, 22(16), p. 6317. doi:10.3390/s22166317. (View Paper)
- Baron, K.G. et al. (2017) ‘Orthosomnia: Are some patients taking the Quantified Self Too Far?’, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 13(02), pp. 351–354. doi:10.5664/jcsm.6472. (View Paper)
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