Improving sleep quality with tracking devices like Oura?

[patrissimo]

Hi all. I posted here a bit back in 2011-2013 when I was actively working on my sleep (my intro/details thread: viewtopic/t85661/UARS-low-numbers-bad-s ... -CPAP.html). Summary is, I have UARS (low AHI but poor sleep), have had a number of surgeries (MMA & turbinectomy helped; tonsils/adenoids/septoplasty did not), and got the best results by getting on ASV with Dr. Krakow's help. I would consider my UARS pretty stubborn in that even with all this, I wake up 1-3x/night, and my sleep quality is only so-so (but way better than without ASV!). But I'm sure I have UARS (as opposed to bad sleep unrelated to breathing) because ASV helps a lot, my sleep quality is noticeably affected by my airway (ie nasal congestion), my heart is pounding when I wake up, etc.

I'm realizing now that I'm in my 40s that this quality of sleep just isn't good enough, and I need to work on it more. Primarily I am pursuing an EASE palate expansion with Dr. Kasey Li, I am early but the results have been noticeable although mild. But I also want to try other things.

I'm looking for quantitative metrics from tracking devices like Oura, FitBit, pulse oximeter, etc, because very few things make a noticeable difference in my subjective observation, so just trying to notice "do I feel better when I use Breathe-Rite strips for a few weeks" does not work for me (except big stuff like CPAP). I suspect my next wins will be from identifying some 5% improvements that I can see in the data but not feel. And I don't find it works to do things without measuring, there are literally hundreds of ideas for how to sleep better (take magnesium, take vitamin D, use breathe-rite strips, tape your mouth, quit caffeine, quit alcohol, take reflux medications, tilt your bed, ....) and I do not have the time & energy to do them unless I know they actually work, for me and my body.

Now, what most apnea researchers do is use AHI, which we get from our CPAPs for free. Unfortunately, I have UARS and so my AHI is low/zero, especially on CPAP, despite sleep still being disturbed (and sleep techs can see the resistance in my breath waveforms, and in my EEG, ie I do have RERAs).

Years ago when I was first working on this, I used a home EEG call the Zeo headband (since gone out of business). I tried writing down subjective scores ("how did I feel I slept last night?", "how is my energy today?"), downloading my CPAP & Zeo data into a spreadsheet and looking for patterns. I found basically zero correlation between anything. Which was rather discouraging.

I'm hoping that the better devices of today, like the Oura, will meaningfully correlate with my sleep quality / apnea severity and can be used to test interventions. I'd love to talk to anyone who has worked to optimize their apnea treatment & sleep quality using such devices, and over time had some subjective improvement guided by device metrics.

(Note I'm not looking for ideas on interventions to do, those are plentiful and not helpful until I have a framework in which to evaluate them).

I searched here for Oura and didn't find a lot, I didn't search for FitBit, feel free to point me at other threads or users.

Cheers,
Pat

[Pugsy]

Try doing a site specific search through google vs using the forum search function which is less than ideal.

site cpaptalk.com FitBit

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... com+FitBit

site cpaptalk.com OURA

https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... x0Q4dUDCAo

Basically what you do is type in
site cpaptalk.com and then a space and whatever you are wanting to search for
this works especially nicely when doing something that only has 3 characters because the forum search function can't search for anything with 3 characters or less.

[slowriter]

I posted a review of my experiences using the newish, Zeo-like, Dreem 2 headband, here.

It has an EEG and other sensors, and CSV export. I, diagnosed with UARS, have more recently been using that data to track a metric that Barry Krakow suggested, which is "REM Consolidation Index" (really just mean REM stage duration), which he says should be above 15. Lower than that is evidence of fragmentation characteristic of inadequately treated UARS.

Screenshot from 2020-01-26 15-57-32.png (24.26 KiB) Viewed 816 times

I also posted a link to a script in that thread that will allow one to convert the Dreem CSV data into Zeo CSV, for importing of sleep stage data into OSCAR.