12 ms·
So, as a critical care nurse with 18 years of experience, and as someone who has been seeing a sleep medicine physician for multiple sleep disturbances for seve
by iamelgringo 16y ago
So, as a critical care nurse with 18 years of experience, and as someone who has been seeing a sleep medicine physician for multiple sleep disturbances for several years, I feel inclined to say something.
I have my doubts about the premise that if people are awakened when they move their arms, they will wake up more refreshed. If Wake Mate has done studies showing this is true rather than personal anecdote, I'd love to read it.
What WakeMate refers to on their website as "Actigraphy" is a method that sleep medicine uses to measure sleep/wake cycles and circadian rhythms by measuring arm movements. I know it has been used during sleep studies, and some of the literature I read showed this, but the studies I read showed that Actigraphy was better used in longitudinal studies. People do tend to move around a lot less when they are in bed sleeping, and they move around a lot more when they are awake. But actigraphy seems to be especially uuseful in capturing data over the course of several weeks rather than during a particular sleep cycle.
I would love to read some research on this, if WakeMate has it. What I was able to find online were these references [1]. And, it seems like they are saying that actigraphy is much better at measuring cycles of wakefulness/sleepyness over long periods of time rather than measuring depth of sleep.
Also:
These limitations
rely on how to decide if someone is awake or asleep (automatic scoring
algorithms) and not on the activity measurement itself. However, regarding
the sleep-wake pattern during daily routine, the actigraphy seems to
add more naturalistic information. Thus, it might be helpful for monitoring
sleep-wake patterns of insomnia, rhythm disorders, and inadequate
perception of sleep in longitudinal studies. Actigraphy might even
replace the self-assessment of sleep in some circumstances as it has been
reported that patients with insomnia not only underestimate the duration
of sleep but also overestimate the sleep latency.22 The American Academy
of Sleep Medicine23 considers that actigraphy might help the assessment
of the sleep-wake pattern of insomnia patients for extend periods,
thus providing data not usually measured by PSG. [2]
From what I know, wouldn't measurement of rapid eye movements be better at providing data on when to people wake up?
That being said, I do think that you guys might have a great direction in home sleep measurement.
I have sleep apnea. I stop breathing or under breath to the point of rousing me from sleep about 30 times an hour. I've undergone extensive testing for this, and it's really expensive to provide that testing ($3000 to 5000 per sleep study). A lot of nurses that I work with know that their husband snores, and wake themselves up at night. But, those nurses have a very hard time convincing their husband that they need to go see a doctor about it.
If you could provide an inexpensive way to tell a person that they stopped breathing for 30 to 45 seconds at a time several hundred times a night. It would probably be a lot easier to convince that person that they need to go see a doctor.
/$0.02
ref:
[1] http://www.aasmnet.org/Resources/PracticeParameters/PP_Actigraphy_Circ.pdf http://www.aasmnet.org/Resources/PracticeParameters/PP_Actig...
[2] http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:E06qD_EZLSYJ:www.journalsleep.org/Articles/260111.pdf+actigraphy+sleep+study&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESh50-olBbYd-bduJ1GpLgMNAQ7cg-e849GxKjKf7JwNZRE55dj0fB-SY15V8vYGp3qitZ6GgFLP_WRCqo7aYiu25j0-DdZvm8uJSAXwEhEDef6BXaw7N0pM2ng0h1ZB3rmTGtOG&sig=AHIEtbT3DBFfF5ewL4wAz3UOi5c-Af60aA http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:E06qD_EZLSYJ:w... pp 84
Updates: Clarification of some statements.
- irq 16y agoThere is an inexpensive way to do this, actually. It's not as good as a real sleep study of course, but it works. Go to eBay and search for "usb pulse oximeter". They're about $100. Wear it overnight (tape helps) while the software graphs your blood oxygen level. If you have sleep apnea, at some point during the night, your oxygen will dip significantly and your pulse will spike at the same time. It is easy to see this event on the graph. Depending on how much of a dip there is, and how often it happens, determines the severity of your sleep apnea. I have sleep apnea myself and have had a real sleep study done. I use the pulse oximeter at home to verify the effectiveness of whatever sleep apnea treatment I'm using at the time (cpap machines, different kinds of cpap masks, dental devices, etc).
- aik 16y agoVery interesting. Is this basically what you're talking about? http://cgi.ebay.com.au/New-Fingertip-Pulse-Oximeter-OLED-USB-Memory-50D-PLUS-/250657821889?pt=AU_Medical_Special_Needs&hash=item3a5c5ed4c1#ht_5648wt_905 http://cgi.ebay.com.au/New-Fingertip-Pulse-Oximeter-OLED-USB... I may need to get one of these.
- irq 16y agoYes, that looks pretty good. I bought mine over a year ago and it has no memory - if you want to log, it has to be connected to a computer, so I sleep tethered when I use it. This one looks like quite an improvement.
- tptacek 16y agoErin thinks I do this, too. I flat-out don't believe her (oh, I know I snore, but she's concerned about the health implications, not the snoring). Here's my logic: I'm 34, I get 4-6 hours of sleep a night, and I'm never drowsy during the day. If apnea was messing up my sleep, wouldn't it stand to reason that I'd feel like hell? (I'm asking because you've given this a lot of thought.) Are you still a trauma nurse by the way? You are my hero.
- 16y ago