Your sleep tracker is more than just a wearable to display the amount of money in your bank, apparently.
Research looking at five million nights of sleep from 33,000 people through their tracker, identified five main types of sleep. These types (sleep phenotypes) were then divided into 13 subtypes. But scientists found that how often a person interchanges between them may offer up to 10 times more information to detect health conditions.
In the study, published in the journal npj Digital Medicine, found it could give people information about chronic illnesses from Covid-19 to diabetes and sleep apnea.
Scientists used data collected from Oura Ring, a smart tracker that analyzes skin temperature and sleep as well as other health information. It’s similar to the Whoop or Apple smart wearables.
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The team discovered people move between sleep phenotypes over time, which was reflecting how their health changed. It was able to map out how their health altered, like a personal diary.
Benjamin Smarr, a senior author on the study, said: “We found that little changes in sleep quality helped us identify health risks.”
Smarr, faculty member in the Jacobs School of Engineering and Halicioglu Data Science Institute at the University of California San Diego, added: “Those little changes wouldn’t show up on an average night, or on a questionnaire, so it really shows how wearables help us detect risks that would otherwise be missed.”
Researchers also said using data from a sleep tracker, at a population scale, could offer insight into patterns that may act as early warning signs for health conditions or infections.
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Sleep tracker data reveals five sleep types
From the paper, scientists were able to determine five sleep types from the 33,000 sample size.
- Phenotype 1: “Normal” sleep, usually eight hours, uninterrupted for at least six days in a row. The most common type researches discovered.
- Phenotype 2: When someone sleeps uninterrupted for around half the time, say three hours or less.
- Phenotype 3: Those wearing the sleep tracker slept continuously most the time, but had interrupted periods one night a week. Interrupted is signalled as sleeping for five or so hours, waking up and then sleeping three hours or less.
- Phenotype 4: People may sleep continuously some of the time but now and again wake up in the middle of the night, or suffer from waking up more than once.
- Phenotype 5: The final type sees someone only sleep for short periods, extremely interrupted rest, but the rarest from the findings.
Researchers found it was how often a person switches between these types that distinguished who suffered from chronic conditions, like sleep apnea and diabetes. But it wasn’t their average sleep type that gave the game away, but the switch between more than one.
Not only that, but scientists said, disrupted sleep, even if rare, gave a lot more away.
Prof Edward Wang, from the University of California San Diego, co-author, said: “We found that the little differences in how sleep disruptions occur can tell us a lot. Even if these instances are rare, their frequency is also telling. So it’s not just whether you sleep well or not – it’s the patterns of sleep over time where the key info hides.”
“If you imagine there’s a landscape of sleep types, then it’s less about where you tend to live on that landscape, and more about how often you leave that area,” lead author, Varun Viswanath, graduate student in the Department of Electrical and Comptuter Engineering at the University of California San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, said.
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