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Obviously, I will die one way or another but I recently got Garmin watch which tracks my sleep.
Over the last three weeks, I've had one night with 1hr 25 min and one night with 1hr 1 min of deep sleep recorded.
Other than that, some nights have no deep sleep at all and the remaining nights are a trivial number of minutes deep sleep (less than 30).
Is this normal (for someone who isn't the father of young kids!)?
I've been off the booze since NYE and exercising every day (some easy days but some bloody hard Zwift sessions as well). I'm generally "in bed" for 8 hrs though I have what seems like fairly long periods awake or very light sleep (the Garmin seems useless at differentiating between light sleep and awake).
Basically, is my lack of deep sleep "normal", and if not, how do I fix it?
Garmin's sleep tracking is terrible IME, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Don't sleep with your watch on.
Can't recall if it specifically affects deep sleep, but overtraining can cause sleep havok.
Garmin’s sleep tracking is terrible IME, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
Yes, you could be having loads of deep sleep, just the watch is missing it.
My Polar went faulty last year, at first I thought I was coming down with Cv as my resting HR was up, but it just kept going up and up....
[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50516817971_58c28189af.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50516817971_58c28189af.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2jXZU1c ]Dodgy HR data[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/brf/ ]Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr
Turned out watch was faulty - got it swapped for a new one at Halfords and back to normal!
Haha, it's definitely not just the Garmin!
I know I'm not getting enough "quality" sleep, just that the Garmin is (possibly) putting numbers on it and just wondering what numbers other people of a similar age and/or fitness/activity level (yeah, I know...) see
hello Mark I asked a similar question a couple of months ago - conclusion was Garmin Sleep is not very accurate.
Ben
https://singletrackmag.com/forum/topic/deep-sleep/
Garmin lies. I’ve been up for hours with the kids when they’ve been sick or just not sleeping and my watch tells me I’ve had tonnes of uninterrupted sleep. I also get the zero or very little deep sleep thing and I’m not dead. Vivoactive 4 here if the model makes any difference.
Take the garmin off when you sleep. . It’s a bit like how strava can make you chase the numbers rather than enjoying the ride. If you know you aren’t sleeping well, and you the have (inaccurate) data that “confirms” that it will just end up making you worry unnecessarily. Which will make you sleep worse
Same on Samsung active watch.
I just find the numbers interesting but don't believe them.
Apparently some nights i have had 8.5 hrs sleep and only 15 mins of deep sleep.
Ignore everything wearable tech devices claim about your sleep. They all measure nothing more than acceleration, and pulse rate if you are lucky. It is not possible for them to tell when you are asleep, let alone what stages you have been in.
I’ve just got a c-pap machine for apnea.
Deep sleep is a fine fine thing. Perhaps a chat with the GP is in order.
Thanks @jaminb, that exactly what I was looking for.
Anecdotally, it seems that hard exercise is not conducive to deep sleep so I'll keep that in mind for when I start building in some recovery days.
(I've been focused on weight loss the last few weeks, rather than structured training)
drinking on an evening? that'll do it
It may have been said, but when I looked into sleep apps it was said they are not at all accurate.
Oh and I think someone said REM and Deep sleep were both Deep sleep so you could add them together
Pebble's (if anyone remembers them) always seemed pretty okay at sleep tracking with just an accelerometer. At least, it used to be able to track sleep/awake/naps reasonably well. I've always been disappointed with Garmin. I can be up for 4 hours reading in the middle of the night, and sleep terribly, and it'll still register 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Just don't believe any of the Garmin metrics. On checking my Fenix 6 I often find it showing that I went to sleep and entered 'deep sleep' whilst sat in the evening watching the TV. It then shows I 'wake up' when I get up to go to bed then immediately shows sleep again whilst reading. Its all nonsense.
Likewise my average Pulse Ox is 93%. I was worried at this (though not really). It often shows me at 89%. Coincidently I was in hospital last week having checkups re an unrelated matter. They checked my Pulse Ox at 100%. My watch at the same time was sat at 91%.
Garmin is good for GPS and a stop watch, but to be honest I don't believe anything else.
I'm not replacing it!!
I've a fitbit,I cant vouch for its accuracy, but being semi insomniac ,it says Im in light sleep when I believe I havent slept, my guess of 3hours light sleep would register as 5 on fitbit.
However the average deep sleep/REM for my age is 1h10m/1hr30m,and Im normally closer to half this, on fitbit
Probably not very accurate. I wouldn't loose sleep over it.
I have a Garmin, it is shite, I have a FitBit, also shite. Teenage boys, well they sleep all day now so also shite. New pup, was a good measure but he now, at 4 months, sleeps from 1030 till 0730, so also shite.
If you are asleep and don’t wake up for at least 5 hours. unless because you’re dead, then all good I reckon 😝
If you feel you're sleeping badly and the Garmin agrees, then you probably are.
Do you feel more refreshed on those days it does indicate deep sleep?
I have a Fitbit and I find it's generally pretty good, and correlates with my feeling. Apart from the thing mentioned above about recording laying awake as light sleep.
Look at it this way.. When you wake up in the morning, how do you feel?
Do you feel well-rested?.. Well, then you had a good night sleep.
If you slept like crap, go earlier to bed when you initially start feeling tired.
Sometimes it's hard to sleep if you do not follow your natural sleeping rhytm.
My Garmin watch thinks I'm asleep now. It missed completely the hour nap I had earlier.
Not sure how it would know when I sleep anyway, aside from the fixed hours I gave it. There's not much difference in my heart rate, unless it listens to my snoring.
Nope
There have been plenty of times people got little sleep per night, for example the first world war, where soldiers spent years with little 'full term' sleep.
Bound to affect you mentally though. But you should be able to combat it by just staying awake. Longest I think I've managed was 4 days straight. After about two days you take on a bit of a heady dreamlike condition.
After that you will get a good 14hours.
I'd suspect your mind is also playing a large part, through anxiety and turmoil. But taking something like 2mg or 5mg diazepam each night will relax your mind and should promote a deeper sleep.
The only accurate metric these activity trackers show is the time of day.
Agree with what everyone else is saying about the accuracy of wrist based monitors for two reasons - a) they use optical sensors which are pretty inaccurate to start with and b) they're only measuring your HR once every couple of minutes or so, unless you're recording an activity.
I tried a Whoop for about a year, which is supposed to be best in class for wrist wearables tracking sleep and it stressed me out so much that my sleep got worse and worse, to the point at which I needed sleeping pills.
Now I just accept that I'm a very light sleeper and enjoy the nights when I do conk out completely.
I have had Withings sensor under mattress topper for couple of years and while measured values (deep sleep, duration, depth, regularity, heart rate) are probably not that accurate the 'sleep scores' have been quite consistent on how refreshed I have been feeling in the morning.
The value I get is from it is long term view of how I sleep and how much I sleep without any manual logging. I don't check my data even every day, it's more like 'I'm feeling ****, let's see if I have slept well this week' and then try to adjust training and life to allow more sleep.
To be honest, it's not just sleep data that wearables are crap at. They tend to massively overestimate calorie burn too.
Rubbish that you pay a premium for these products yet common consensus is that they are infact useless at the functions they were purchased for. The GPS has been off a few times for Garmin lately too. Definitely room for a rival I feel that can offer more reliable metrics. Perhaps Google will come in and shake a few trees.
I would say my Polar Vantage is pretty good in sleep stats 95% of the time. Every so often it get it badly wrong eg thinks I didn't go to sleep till 4am or something, but generally it seems pretty good at working when I dropped off / woke up.
Side issue.
My wife gets very little Deep Sleep so I used the same app to measure mine. I got quite a few hours consistently which also meant I got in trouble for it as though it was selfish.
Very amusing.
Garmin can’t even make their devices talk to their own app reliably. So, I can’t see sleep monitoring being terribly accurate.
An interesting article about fitness trackers:
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/fitness-trackers-goals
the accuracy of wrist based monitors for two reasons – a) they use optical sensors which are pretty inaccurate to start with and b) they’re only measuring your HR once every couple of minutes or so, unless you’re recording an activity.
I tried a Whoop for about a year, which is supposed to be best in class for wrist wearables tracking sleep
This is all wrong, though - Optical sensors are pretty accurate for routine use, outside of high-intensity sport; Whoop is pretty crap (at least when it comes to measuring HR, and if they can't get something that simple right I certainly wouldn't trust their sleep recording); and HR tracking devices sampling rate varies wildly. Most companies apply smoothing to the data they show you in their apps, though.
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2021/02/polar-verity-sense-optical-hr-sensor-band-in-depth-review.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/Garmin/comments/c947iu/resting_heart_rate_sample_frequency_on_forerunner/
Basically, is my lack of deep sleep “normal”, and if not, how do I fix it?
If you are still tired the next day you have not slept well if not then normal I guess. I hardly sleep more than 7 hours these days and if I sleep less 4 hours I will feel tired but 5 to 6 hour is pretty normal for me.
How's your blood pressure? Normal? Up?