My new Fitbit

So, for Black Friday, Amy encouraged me to get a Fitbit.  My mother wears a Fitbit every day, counting her steps.  And one or more of my siblings have theirs to track their exercise and other health parameters.  My friend Carlos, in Ecuador, recently got himself a Fitbit.  

I actually bought one a year or two ago, but I balked at activating it when I saw how much personal information they were collecting about me.  And it's not much use if it's not connected.  So I returned it.  This time, there were profuse claims in the literature about how they protect and won't share my information.  (Alphabet (Google) owns Fitbit.  So who's left to want to get your information?)

I'm already satisfied with my exercise plan and other things I do with respect to my lifestyle, but I want to know more about my sleep.  The Fitbit appears to do a good job of monitoring and grading your sleep.  

I wrote recently about my use of sleep meds.  They have helped a lot, but I don't use them every night.  Many nights I sleep very poorly, even when I take a pill.

If you read Beating the Dementia Monster, you know how important sleep is to brain health, especially the deep sleep phase.  You cycle through the phases of light sleep, REM sleep, and deep sleep throughout the night.  It's during deep sleep that changes in the flow of cerebrospinal fluid will sweep Alzheimer's-related trash out of your brain and into your lymphatic system for removal.  So insufficient deep sleep promotes Alzheimer's disease.  As a treatable factor in Alzheimer's, it's #2 behind exercise for resisting the disease.  The best research points to seven hours of good sleep as optimal for brain health, with perhaps 18 to 30% of that being deep sleep.

I've been using the Fitbit for a few days now.  What have I found?

First off, I've confirmed that I don't sleep well.  Each night I get a numeric score on my sleep, with it classified as poor or fair.  I presume people who sleep better than I do can score "good" and maybe "excellent," but I haven't gotten high enough numbers to find out.

In fact, the first night I used it, I couldn't sleep long enough for it to even score me.  Subsequently, I've had one night graded as poor, and three nights graded as fair.

For deep sleep, the first night I got 10 minutes.  Over the following nights, I got 39 minutes, 47 minutes, 47 minutes, and 54 minutes.  This is all less than optimal, since I should be getting at least 18 % of seven hours.  That's 76 minutes.  At least, that's how I understand these things.

The Fitbit is just taking a measurement.  At this time, I have no reason to expect my sleep to improve no matter how much I wear it.  However, my memory and cognition seem to be doing OK for now, and I feel well during the day.  I occasionally doze off for a couple of minutes, but I'm otherwise alert throughout the day.  At night, when I'm done sleeping, I'm done sleeping.  I'm only rarely able to get back to sleep and get to that seven hours, and then only with a pill.

I have been very curious about my sleep for some time.  The Fitbit seems to be answering my questions.