Sleep trackers?

[BikeisDusty]

Do any of you use sleep trackers like a Basis Peak or the ResMed S+ in addition to the CPAP measurements to tell you what sleep cycle you are in?

Bill

[Krelvin]

Only sleep tracker I use is SleepyHead. I know pretty much each time when I wake up if I've had a decent night, but check with SleepyHead via Wireless SDCard to see how the night or sleep period went, how many hours etc...

CPAP measurements to tell you what sleep cycle you are in?

For most people, their sleep cycles don't vary much. Are you talking about sleep stages? Hard to monitor that with an external monitor.

[sptrout]

Do any of you use sleep trackers like a Basis Peak or the ResMed S+ in addition to the CPAP measurements to tell you what sleep cycle you are in?

Bill

I have to disagree with Krelvin a little on this one. CPAP data, and the software that interprets it, are not sleep monitors, but are just breathing monitors. There is nothing in the data that measures sleep quality, but only if your breathing was impaired to some degree. For example, a person could get a perfect AHI score of zero, and never have slept a wink, or just as bad, only had "light sleep" without any deep, or REM sleep. Naturally, a bad AHI score is highly likely to mean that you had a bad night's sleep, but that was caused by your breathing being impaired by apnea events. As a person that has had a long series of nights where I was getting 8 hours of sleep, but without any deep or REM sleep, you will feel terrible in a few days. (FYI - - Light sleep + deep sleep + REM sleep = total sleep. Therefore, you can totally miss deep sleep and REM sleep and still have 8 hours of total sleep - - you will feel terrible.) There are medications on the market, some even used for sleep, that will totally kill deep sleep (Xanax), and others that will reduce/eliminate REM sleep. CPAP data will not be able to give you a clue that these types of things are happening as long as there are no apnea events.

True sleep monitors on the market today for personal use, IMO, do not really meet the requirements needed to correctly measure sleep quality. I was spoiled a couple years ago by a product called a "Zeo Sleep Coach". This device actually measured brainwaves (light, deep, & REM), and then used that data to give a person a fairly accurate picture each morning of exactly how their sleep was. It told me the minute I fell asleep, the number of times that I was awakened during the night, when I woke up in the morning, and the amount of each of the sleep types previously mentioned. The Zeo took all this data and calculated a numeric score for each night so a user could tell immediately if their sleep was good, bad, or at least different than the night before. It also was capable of allowing the user to upload all the data to Zeo's computers where it was made available for detailed online review. They also allowed the user to download the entire saved database so the user could do like I did and import it into Excel to be able to chart long term trends. With all these types of data, I was able to weed out all kinds of things that were robbing me of sleep, many totally unexpected. I sure wish that the company was still in business, because it would be a perfect match with CPAP data to really tell how a person slept last night.

So, to answer your original questions,1) no sleep trackers on the market today, IMO, are all that useful, and 2) CPAPs do not monitor sleep cycles in any way or tell you the quality of your sleep.

[AcedDublB]

http://imgur.com/K6Hhx4E

Here is a screen shot of my Sleep Tracker from last evening.

I can guarantee I did not sleep the entire night as I checked the clock numerous times while laying awake with my mask on.

See my post "Need Some Advice Please"