Many people buy smart wearable devices, such as a fitness tracker that can record sleep, in order to monitor their sleep. There are many kinds of sleep trackers on the market, and the price is about 200 yuan. So, are they reliable?
The standard sleep monitoring device is called “polysomnography” (English called Polysomnography, PSG for short). The price is up to several hundred thousand yuan. It can record various physiological signals of sleep state all night, including EEG, ocular electricity, nose and mouth. Breathing airflow, snoring, mandibular muscle, ECG, chest and abdomen breathing, upper and lower limbs, etc. are the “gold standard” for the diagnosis of many sleep disorders. “Multi-channel sleep monitoring” combines more than a dozen human physiological signals to accurately judge sleep conditions.
The smart fitness tracker currently on the market mainly estimates the sleep state of the user by analyzing several simple physiological signals such as physical activity, pulse, and body temperature during sleep. There will be some gaps between the results and the results of standard polysomnography. Especially for the staging of sleep.
In this case, do we still need to use a fitness tracker to record sleep? The answer is yes. Because some sleep trackers are basically reliable for judging when users fall asleep, when they wake up, and when they sleep. In addition, the fitness tracker basically has a motion monitoring function that can guide the user to achieve the desired amount of exercise, thereby promoting the treatment of insomnia.
So, if you’re using or preparing to use a fitness tracker that records sleep, the focus should be on total sleep time. For the results of sleep stages such as deep sleep, light sleep, and rapid eye movement sleep, don’t worry too much.
In addition, if the fitness tracker’s monitoring results make you feel relaxed and at ease, I highly recommend continuing to use it. If the sleep tracker is aggravating your anxiety about sleep, use it to monitor your exercise data.
