WHOOP Proven As Most Accurate, Non-Invasive Sleep Monitor

[Tonawanda]

Too good to be true? I came across these doing online research to see if I could come up with a reasonably accurate method to determine my nightly REM sleep. The other information the device provides could also be valuable if accurate. The first article is obviously an advertisement from the company that makes the device. The other two are NIH studies. I could use help with interpreting and understanding some of the details of these studies. There is a $30 per month subscription to get the continued results for wearers of the device. It seems that it would be worth it?


WHOOP Proven As Most Accurate, Non-Invasive Sleep Monitor
3rd Party Study Validates Heart Rate Monitoring, Sleep Staging, And Behavior Change
NEWS PROVIDED BY
WHOOP
Feb 19, 2020, 09:00 ET
BOSTON, Feb. 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- A recently published study conducted by the University of Arizona shows that WHOOP, the human performance company, offers a highly accurate commercially available wearable for measuring sleep staging. The study also found that wearing WHOOP improves sleep quality by encouraging members to prioritize sleep and providing actionable feedback via app insights.
Investigators at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences used the WHOOP Strap 3.0 in a new study to determine the effects of wearables on sleep and well-being of participants. The study tested the accuracy of the wearable against polysomnography, a clinical research tool that records your brain waves, oxygen level in your blood, heart rate and breathing as well as eye and leg movements during sleep.
"This study shows that the accuracy of WHOOP in measuring heart rate, heart rate variability, and sleep staging of slow wave and REM or dream sleep was excellent when compared to polysomnography, which is the gold-standard in sleep tracking," said Dr. Sairam Parthasarathy, MD, who is a professor of medicine at the UArizona College of Medicine – Tucson and director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Sciences. "What's more, the accuracy of WHOOP as a wearable and its availability compared to the limited accessibility of polysomnography may in the future facilitate better population-health management."
The study confirms the exceptional ability of WHOOP to measure heart rate and respiratory rate during sleep, and also reveals that WHOOP is within one heartbeat and breath per minute of gold-standard measurements. WHOOP is the first wearable to publish performance in these two dimensions and is near-perfect in its accuracy.
Sleep is key to recovery and one of the best things people can do to improve their mental and physical health.1 It's vital that wearable devices are as accurate as possible considering the immense value of sleep and the widespread adoption of these tracking tools. The results validate the sleep accuracy of WHOOP while also demonstrating the power of WHOOP to change behavior and transform health.
About WHOOP
WHOOP, the human performance company, provides a membership for 24/7 coaching to improve performance. The WHOOP membership comes with free hardware (the new Whoop Strap 3.0), a coaching platform designed to optimize behavior, and a community of high performers. WHOOP members range from professional athletes and Fortune 500 CEOs to fitness enthusiasts and endurance competitors to executives and military personnel. Studies show WHOOP can increase sleep, prevent burnout, and improve performance. WHOOP is based in Boston and was founded in 2012. Visit WHOOP.com for the latest brand news and connect with us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
1Rubin R. Sleeping In Doesn't Mitigate Metabolic Changes Linked to Sleep
Deficit. JAMA. 2019 Jun 4;321(21):2062-2063. doi: 10.1001/jama.2019.4701. PubMed PMID: 31090882.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-release ... 07356.html


Effect of wearables on sleep in healthy individuals: a randomized crossover trial and validation study

Abstract[/b]
Study objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine whether a wearable sleep-tracker improves perceived sleep quality in healthy participants and to test whether wearables reliably measure sleep quantity and quality compared with polysomnography.
Methods: This study included a single-center randomized crossover trial of community-based participants without medical conditions or sleep disorders. A wearable device (WHOOP, Inc.) was used that provided feedback regarding sleep information to the participant for 1 week and maintained sleep logs versus 1 week of maintained sleep logs alone. Self-reported daily sleep behaviors were documented in sleep logs. Polysomnography was performed on 1 night when wearing the wearable. The Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System sleep disturbance sleep scale was measured at baseline, day 7 and day 14 of study participation.
Results: In 32 participants (21 women; 23.8 ± 5 years), wearables improved nighttime sleep quality (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System sleep disturbance: B = -1.69; 95% confidence interval, -3.11 to -0.27; P = .021) after adjusting for age, sex, baseline, and order effect. There was a small increase in self-reported daytime naps when wearing the device (B = 3.2; SE, 1.4; P = .023), but total daily sleep remained unchanged (P = .43). The wearable had low bias (13.8 minutes) and precision (17.8 minutes) errors for measuring sleep duration and measured dream sleep and slow wave sleep accurately (intraclass coefficient, 0.74 ± 0.28 and 0.85 ± 0.15, respectively). Bias and precision error for heart rate (bias, -0.17%; precision, 1.5%) and respiratory rate (bias, 1.8%; precision, 6.7%) were very low compared with that measured by electrocardiogram and inductance plethysmography during polysomnography.
Conclusions: In healthy people, wearables can improve sleep quality and accurately measure sleep and cardiorespiratory variables.
Clinical trial registration: Registry: ClinicalTrials.gov; Name: Assessment of Sleep by WHOOP in Ambulatory Subjects; Identifier: NCT03692195.
Keywords: sleep; sleep loss; sleep quality; sleep tracker; wearable.
© 2020 American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32043961/


A validation study of the WHOOP strap against polysomnography to assess sleep
Abstract
The aim of the study was to compare the WHOOP strap - a wearable device that estimates sleep based on measures of movement and heart rate derived from actigraphy and photoplethysmography, respectively. Twelve healthy adults (6 females, 6 males, aged 22.9 ± 3.4 years) participated in a 10-day, laboratory-based protocol. A total of 86 sleeps were independently assessed in 30-s epochs using polysomnography and WHOOP. For WHOOP, bed times were entered by researchers and sleeps were scored by the company based on proprietary algorithms. WHOOP overestimated total sleep time by 8.2 ± 32.9 minutes compared to polysomnography, but this difference was non-significant. WHOOP was compared to polysomnography for 2-stage (i.e., wake, sleep) and 4-stage categorisation (i.e., wake, light sleep [N1 or N2], slow-wave sleep [N3], REM) of sleep periods. For 2-stage categorisation, the agreement, sensitivity to sleep, specificity for wake, and Cohen's kappa were 89%, 95%, 51%, and 0.49, respectively. For 4-stage categorisation, the agreement, sensitivity to light sleep, SWS, REM, and wake, and Cohen's kappa were 64%, 62%, 68%, 70%, 51%, and 0.47, respectively. In situations where polysomnography is impractical (e.g., field settings), WHOOP is a reasonable method for estimating sleep, particularly for 2-stage categorisation, if accurate bedtimes are manually entered.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32713257/

[Julie]

Sounds great, but a little confusing as to whether it's just diagnostic, or whether (and how exactly) it does improve sleep, and whether it touches apnea per se, which doesn't really seem to be mentioned in the reports. Or I may not be reading it right?

[Pugsy]

Conclusions: In healthy people, wearables can improve sleep quality

I only want to address this part from one of the studies.
Assuming these sort of gadgets are actually accurate....how does wearing one improve my sleep quality?
How does it make me fall asleep faster or not wake up a gazillion times in the night because my back hurts like hell...is it going to fix my pain issues?

From a quick look at how it works....sort of like the FitBit Charge thing that does heart rate and sleep stages and after having 2 of them (both crapped out and I decided not worth the cost to invest more money in them when they really didn't tell me anything I didn't already know) and personal experience of them telling me I was sound asleep when in fact I was up and taking the dogs outside to pee in the middle of the night....I take what they tell me with a grain of salt.

So what if it tells me I only slept 5 hours and I need 7....gosh, I didn't know that already? I want something that actually tells me how to get that 7 hours I need and as of yet none of these gadgets do that. Just wearing a gadget doesn't mean I get it. Holy crap...I wish it were that easy.

My own body does a pretty darn good job of relating my sleep quality....I don't need to spend X amount of dollars for a gadget to tell me that the reason I feel like crap is because my sleep quality was crap. My own body does that for free every day.

But some people like gadgets and they need or want verification for whatever reason and they are okay with the money spent to get those sort of gadgets.
And it's their money to do with as they please.
Remember I did try the FitBit Charge II thing but I did it mainly because I wanted heart rate record more than sleep stage thing.
I was having some pulse rate spikes that I wanted to monitor more closely and doing the 24 hour Holter monitor thing didn't catch anything.
I learned real quickly that the sleep stage thing wasn't 100% accurate so I took what it said with a grain of salt.
And yes, it did often tell me my sleep quality wasn't so great but it wasn't telling me anything I hadn't already figured out just from what my own body was telling me.

Now when they can tell me how to actually fix my problem...then I might be more willing to spend more money on gadgets.
Just telling me I need more deep sleep doesn't make me get that deep sleep.

With this Whoop thing....$30 a month....is there a minimum time frame? I didn't look closely enough at their website to figure that out or not. A one month gadget trial is certainly cheaper than the FitBit Charge gadget and might be an interesting experiment if someone really is curious and into all the other stuff that it might show a person.

As for diagnosing sleep apnea or treatment...lots of doubts there. It does sleep stages based on heart rate (and probably an accelerator for body movement) and that's pretty much it. Just because I don't move at all during the night doesn't mean I slept. Just means I didn't move.
And as with the FitBit....technology is getting better and better in that area. I have high hopes in that area.

For myself...bleh...been there and done that and need to find a gadget that can actually tell me how to fix my problem above telling me I have a problem.

[Tonawanda]

You make many good points in your response. Certainly every person has to use their own judgment before trying something like this. And, my understanding is also that many of the previous devices did not meet the claims they made. I think for this particular device, the minimum requirement of use is 6 months.

I do agree that you know how you feel on a given morning when you wake up, but I don't always know specifically why and for how long. Since using a Bipap, my apneas are much better now but not ideal or regular. I'm not sure how much of a difference between 5 and 10 apneas make on a given night. And, how much difference between 5 hours and 6 hours of sleep on a given night. There is also my activity and stress level and the time frame I sleep. I also take several medications at different times during the day and evening along with some natural remedies that may have a significant effect on sleep and how I feel in the morning. I'm discussing these things with my doctors on a regular basis to try to find the optimal times for taking those meds.
I don't think the wearing of this device improves the quality of sleep, and I don't know yet what kind of results may come from the use of it, but I do think that any information that might help me find the formula for a better quality of sleep could be worth a $200 investment.

[chunkyfrog]

Let me use my math: $30 a month for at least 6 months.
I assume the device is then returned to the company.
If the right variables were measured, it might help.
Some, no doubt, would like to have one handy for whenever needed--if that were possible.

[Pugsy]

If you think it is worth the investment and think it might shed some light on some questions that are in your mind....and it won't take food off the table..
Go for it.
I did it with the FitBit which I think came in around 150 bucks on sale I think it was for the one that does heart rate and sleep.
I won't do it again though.
Bear in mind though...the accelerator is easily fooled in most situations. I got all sorts of awards for my 7760 steps I took while on my riding lawn mower and mowing the pasture for a couple of hours. Now I did take about 100 steps to the barn and back to get on and off the mower.

Your money...educate yourself as to what to expect and what you wish to learn.

We all buy gadgets of some sort for whatever reasons. I got a drawer full of them. Some not nearly as useful as I first thought but some do come in handy every now and then.

That's the beauty of this country....we get to buy whatever we want or can afford and other than have people roll their eyeballs at us...we can do what we darn well please.

[Pugsy]

One quick thought.

I don't know about the level of detail available with the Whoop reporting....with my FitBit I never could really zoom in to be able to evaluate anything that might be related to apneas. There just wasn't any provision for under the microscope looking kind of thing and that is really what is needed to correlate specific flagged apneas to sleep stage.

Not to mention I sort of lost faith when it said I was sound asleep and I know for a fact I was letting the dog out to pee and in fact had been up for probably 30 minutes.

But again my main reason for getting it was more for the heart rate thing and the sleep stage thing was a side thing.

[chunkyfrog]

I had a step monitor that survived the washer and dryer.
Looking at all "my" steps, I was surprised not to feel a bit tired . . .
It was an Oregon Scientific--I bet a Fitbit would have drowned.

[alarmatic]

Hello, I am new here, so please forgive me if I am in the wrong thread. I am currently using OSCAR, the Wellue O2 Ring, an IP camera (with audio), and a Whoop (>4 years). I was wondering if there is a way to import the Whoop export data into OSCAR to correlate it with my other devices' info. I am learning a lot from these devices and mostly from the IP camera, as I am not only getting a better quality sleep but I am detecting a couple of false positives from the feedback I am getting from the video feed. Thanks a bunch!

[Miss Emerita]

First study:


Conflict of interest statement

All authors have seen and approved the manuscript. Work for this study was performed at University of Arizona. This study was funded by a grant to the University of Arizona from WHOOP Inc., Boston, Massachusetts. The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Second study:

Disclosure statement

Dean Miller’s position as a Research Officer at CQUniversity is currently sponsored by WHOOP Inc - the company that produces the wearable sleep monitors that were used in this study. However, this sponsorship arrangement was initiated after the manuscript was submitted to the Journal of Sports Sciences. Nevertheless, this represents a potential conflict of interest for Dean Miller and for the co-authors who work in the same research group as Dean Miller, i.e. Greg Roach, Charli Sargent and Michele Lastella.

[chunkyfrog]

Duh, conflict confirmed.
The truth is elusive.
Anything to sell snake oil.

[ChicagoGranny]

I was wondering if there is a way to import the Whoop export data into OSCAR to correlate it with my other devices' info.

There is not. Here is a list of devices supported by OSCAR - http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.ph ... p_Monitors