"Watching" Your Sleep: How Accurate is Your Smart Watch at Tracking your Sleep?

Sleep is essential to our health and wellbeing, but most of us tend to underestimate the importance of getting a good night’s rest. Your body goes through several stages of sleep, including what’s known as Rapid Eye Movement, or REM sleep, and three non-REM stages. Each sleep stage plays a different role in your health, from repairing muscles to boosting your immune system and helping your brain sort and store information. Lack of sleep can not only take a toll on your job, relationships, and productivity, but also on your health and safety. In fact many serious medical conditions have been linked to sleep deprivation including heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and hypertension.
Today, technology makes it easier for us to be a little more aware of how we are sleeping. But how accurate is your FitBit or smart watch? Local news station, WAFB Channel 9, and reporter Elizabeth Vowell, turned to the Sleep Experts at The Spine Hospital of Louisiana to find out:
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Results:
The FitBit is pretty accurate at giving a good overall picture of how well you sleep at night, especially when it comes to sleep efficiency, sleep onset, and sleep architecture. What it cannot provide is a medical diagnosis or detect a medical issue like sleep apnea.
Spine Hospital of Louisiana Sleep Experts say if how you are sleeping seems to be affecting your everyday ability to function, you should discuss these issues with your physician and ask about getting your sleep evaluated at The Spine Hospital of Louisiana Sleep Center.]]>

Categorised in: NMC News, Spine Hospital News