I am obsessed with sleep. I’m a girl who works eight hours a night, and I’m usually in bed by 10pm, with tried and tested duvets and pillows, to make sure I get the best sleep possible. But after I started using a fitness tracker to monitor the quality of my naps, my sleep patterns got worse, until a sleep expert told me to stop using it.
Sleep tracking has become increasingly common, with the best fitness trackers incorporating sleep features, via sensors, to track our sleep stages and help us make changes for better quality sleep, while dedicated sleep trackers and smart rings are also growing in popularity.
I started using a Oura Ring, a fitness and sleep tracker, over a year ago, and I quickly became obsessed with how well (or poorly) I was sleeping, as the ring’s sleep metrics were more accurate than any I’d seen before. The ring is lined with sensors that measure biometric data 24 hours a day, giving you stats like your resting heart rate, body temperature, sleep stages, and HRV (heart rate variability) balance, a key indicator of how healthy your heart is. ).
Since its inception, the ring has gone through multiple changes, with sensors being improved to provide ever more accurate data. Oura launched its third-generation ring last November, with updated heart rate sensors and a new SpO2 (blood oxygen level) sensor.
At first it was a useful tool to check how much I had slept the night before, but after a few months I woke up every morning and obsessed over the data and advice the ring gave me through the Oura app. I’ve always hoped to hit that eight-hour golden mark and score high on my overall readiness, a score that should ensure I’d be prepared for a productive work day and a pounding at the gym.
However, on days when I logged into the app and my sleep or average scores were low, it would completely change my mood and outlook for the day. A wave of tiredness washed over me and I began to feel anxious about my to-do list, wondering why there weren’t more than 24 hours in a day.
The Oura ring first came to my attention when I saw celebrities including Prince Harry and Gwyneth Paltrow wearing it, with the simple silver band hugging their celebrity fingers and giving them the stats about their dream they craved. He wanted to get into his exclusive dream club.
But instead of helping me sleep better, the ring made me anxious. If I wasn’t asleep by 11pm, or couldn’t get back to sleep after waking up at night, I would start to get stressed, which made my sleep even worse, not much of a sleep cycle to fall into.
“Take the ring off for a few nights and see if you sleep better,” said Dr. Guy Meadows, a sleep physiologist at the School of Sleep website and apphe finally advised me, after I told him about my sleepless nights worrying about my data.
He went on to state the obvious: that I shouldn’t stay awake worrying about how much sleep, or lack of sleep, my sleep tracker was recording. “You should know how well you’ve slept without looking at the data,” Meadows explained, “a fitness or sleep tracker should just be an added bonus.”
But like any bad habit, I was hooked: If I stopped wearing the ring, how would I know what my resting heart rate was while I slept? Or if you had enough energy to hit the gym the next day?
After a few more weeks of anxious sleep, I decided it was time to take the ring off and go cold turkey for a few nights, and I slept like a baby. As I continued to sleep without it, I noticed that my concentration improved at work, my diet improved, and I performed better in the gym.
The Oura ring now sits on my nightstand, and I deleted the app, and have never looked back. I know some of the best sleep trackers It can help us improve the quality of our sleep, but to be honest, I slept perfectly well before investing in a sleep monitor; maybe I just fell asleep a little greedy.
I still miss tracking my sleep data, and I’m sure most people wouldn’t be as obsessed with their stats as I am, but maybe sleep tracking isn’t for everyone.
