The last few days I had to will, drag and push myself out of bed, only to continue to will, drag and push myself through the day. Fortunately, I knew this was caused by a lack of slow-wave sleep, and to not take how I felt too seriously, but just address the cause. Over the last year I have been learning about and playing with that complex and mysterious period of unconsciousness we call sleep, and the profound impact it has on our mind, body and outlook.
There is a phenomenal book titled "Thinking, Fast & Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. One of the greatest insights of this book, is what Kahneman terms the "what you see, is all there is" bias. Be aware of that bias, because it can stand between the life you have and the life you want.
What does this have to do with sleep? Poor sleep can silently place that bias front and center of your world. It quite literally changes our capabilities and limits our comprehension. When experiencing life through this lens, you assume life feels hard because it is hard. When you are struggling, you think you need to push yourself to improve. Depressed, envious or resentful? You may chock it up to personality, upbringing or habits you feel are immutable - or even more disheartening, that your problems are caused by someone else - if only they would change, your life would improve.
Most of us know how foundational good sleep is, but you have to measure and analyze its quality before you can go about improving it.
When awake, we have some control over work, exercise and focus. We can measure, track and course-correct. But asleep, the body takes over completely.
There are things we can do to set up for better sleep by managing factors we know influence the circadian cycle - timing and dosage of stimulants and depressants, like caffeine, alcohol, bright light and exercise, video games and food. But beyond some awareness of the difficulty falling and staying asleep and how we subjectively feel in the morning, how can we know how well we are sleeping and what adjustments we should make to improve it?
As with all things, if you want to improve an outcome, you need to measure what matters. And since we are unconscious when the measurements need to be made, we need some help from outside sources.
Fortunately, there are numerous options for meaningfully-accurate measurements outside of a sleep lab. One is a smart ring called Oura. Now in it's 3rd generation, the Oura ring measures more than 20 bio-metric signals to provide an in-depth analysis of your sleep.
I received one as a birthday gift a little over a year ago and have been blown away by the insights I have gained. The combination of accurate measurements of sleep stages, blood oxygen levels and heart-rate variability, along with my inputs on daytime events and the Oura app's analysis and science-based recommendations, have proven truly eye-opening and allowed me to improve my sleep enormously.
I had been using a phone app that indirectly measured my movement while I slept to determine sleep phases. That app routinely rated my sleep quality to be 96% - 100%. I donned the Oura ring and was shocked to see it report the amount of deep or slow-wave sleep I was getting constantly ranged between 4 - 12 MINUTES a night. The slow-wave phase of sleep is a critical house-keeping phase that is the most physically-restorative stage of sleep. It has a huge impact on your health as it regulates muscle, tissue, and bone repair, metabolic health, and energy production via hormone controls, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) stores and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) release.
A lack of sufficient deep sleep impacts your mood and performance increasing irritability, fatigue and hunger while decreasing the ability to focus, learn and remember.
If this measurement were accurate, it could explain A LOT about why I had been unsuccessful in eliminating unwanted symptoms. But, was it accurate? I let my daughter, son and ex-husband (who uses and auto-PAP for sleep apnea) each wear it for a night. Their readings were astounding - between 20% and 36% of their total sleep was deep sleep. If this were accurate, it was no wonder, why they could get hours less total sleep per night than I, and still feel and perform better.
I decided to try to increase that number for myself and see if it had an impact on my symptoms. I already had pretty good sleep hygiene - bright light in my eyes as soon as I woke, don't consume caffeine for 2 hours after waking or beyond noon, no light-emitting screens 3 hours before bed, no food 2 hours prior to bed, et cetera. The obvious basics were covered. So, I started observing and experimenting.
After a few "wins" getting my deep sleep time to over 60 minutes, I had the encouraging experience of waking without the sensation of sand in my eyes and the actual desire to get out of bed! I was not stiff in the morning after nights with greater deep sleep, I could tolerate and even semi-enjoy a cold shower, my hands and feet were not icy and my general disposition and outlook were, dare I say, sunny. A low deep sleep score and, boom, back to my old self.
The Oura ring is not perfect, but the data and analysis are strong enough to provide real insights into this foundational aspect of your health and gives you tools to effect it. They are constantly improving the sensors and analytics. For example, they have improved the HRV accuracy and added blood oxygen saturation since I purchase mine. (The battery on my ring also gave out when it was nearly one year old. I contacted Oura, they confirmed the problem and sent me a new ring at not charge.)
Some people say Whoop is better, some think anything less than professional lab readings aren't valuable. I say, adopt a curious mindset and start experimenting and learning. Don't put your health, your relationships and your life on hold, waiting for perfection.