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Fitbit tracker is how I discovered I am in bad shape when it comes to sleep. My doctor was worried I had dementia due to my cognitive issues and hallucinations

Fitbit tracker is how I discovered I am in bad shape when it comes to sleep. My doctor was worried I had dementia due to my cognitive issues and hallucinations in the past few years, and he sent me for neuro-psychiatric testing and to see a neurologist for it. I kept mentioning that my sleep tracker is reporting a lack of quality sleep, especially REM sleep. I said yes I know it's not 100% reliable but it seems worth looking into because on days I get some REM, I feel great. Docs weren't really taking me seriously though. Thanks to the tracker, I was able to determine that on nights I have just awful sleep, it correlated with my exercise days. Turns out that taking a pre-workout loaded with caffeine at 4PM is a terrible idea because caffeine can have a nearly 12 hour half-life. Oops. Ditched the pre-workout and my sleep improved significantly. No more insomnia and less time waking up in the middle of the night. I still have issues with REM at least half of the week unfortunately. I finally got referred to a sleep study a few months ago and although it was for existing sleep apnea - which I've already been treating successfully with cpap/autopap for decades - it confirmed that I am indeed not going into REM. So it's not dementia (at least not yet), it's lack of REM sleep. It also revealed that my body is moving a lot during sleep, not good. And for the cherry on top, I recently started exhibiting behavior of REM sleep disorder where I am smacking/punching myself and my partner and yelling out in the middle of the night. Definitely not a good sign, but at least now we know sleep issues are at the heart of it. That Fitbit sleep tracking turned out to be very valuable after all.

gukov 2y ago
For the moving a lot during sleep problem: have you looked into weighted blankets?
pedalpete 2y ago
Maybe you're just getting your sleep stages confused, but REM sleep, while considered important, is not the vital function of sleep related to memory, dementia, and other health outcomes - from everything I understand, and I work in the sleep/neurotech space. N3, also known as deep sleep is when the glymphatic system flushes toxins from the brain, consolidates memories, increases HGH secretion, along with other hormonal changes, primes the immune system, drives parasympathetic response, etc etc. REM sleep is related to emotional processing, and some memory, but I also recently heard a theory that REM may also be necessary to prevent the elasticity of the brain from over-writing the visual system with other inputs, which was an interesting theory, as sight is the only sense which is turned off during sleep.

gukov 2y ago

For the moving a lot during sleep problem: have you looked into weighted blankets?

pedalpete 2y ago

Maybe you're just getting your sleep stages confused, but REM sleep, while considered important, is not the vital function of sleep related to memory, dementia, and other health outcomes - from everything I understand, and I work in the sleep/neurotech space. N3, also known as deep sleep is when the glymphatic system flushes toxins from the brain, consolidates memories, increases HGH secretion, along with other hormonal changes, primes the immune system, drives parasympathetic response, etc etc. REM sleep is related to emotional processing, and some memory, but I also recently heard a theory that REM may also be necessary to prevent the elasticity of the brain from over-writing the visual system with other inputs, which was an interesting theory, as sight is the only sense which is turned off during sleep.