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by hhanesand 2427 days ago
Prof. Matthew Walker says the accuracy of sleep trackers when it comes to per stage time is questionable. See Peter Attia podcasts w/ Walker.

Have you thought about going to a sleep lab to get some higher quality data? It’s near impossible to diagnose someone over the Internet, especially when the subject matter is so complex.

2 comments

I think the problem is that most sleep trackers try to judge sleep based on heart-rate, which I don't think is valid.

There are a few sleep headbands that use an EEG though and in my experience they've been reliable (e.g. mine correctly judges when I actually fall asleep and has correctly judged that I was in REM sleep when I woke up from a dream).

That's good to hear! My sleep tracker seems to base results on heart rate, and maybe my heart rate doesn't dip enough during sleep to register?

I'd like to do a sleep study, but it's over $1,000 out of pocket, so not a small investment.

That seems plausible to me. I don’t know if HR is a good enough signal, since it varies so much between person to person.

Didn’t know they were that pricy, ouch.

It will be worth it. No price is too high for a lifetime of good sleep.