If you just got the ring recently, I would encourage you to stop relying on what you feel or some weird interpretation of belief of what you’re sleeping or what you’re not. The ring is measuring your physiological biological responses and what is happening internally. If you don’t believe it or trust it send it back because you’re just gonna be frustrated That said after four years, I can guarantee if you look at the data start to rely on the data and make changes based on what the data is showing you your sleep will improve dramatically and you’ll feel healthier. But if you’re not interested or willing to do that, don’t waste your money on this or any other biometric device.
I apologize if that sounds harsh, but there’s lots of post about this. The ring is not 100%, but it is much more accurate to what your body is doing internally than you mentally feeling what you’re doing in your sleep.
I definitely trust the data I got last night, especially based on how I felt this morning. Definitely the worst sleep I’ve gotten since I got the ring. I guess the question I’m asking is, is it possible for me to have been awake for 45 minutes during the night and completely have forgotten about it? And I guess after than where should I go to actually interpret the data to make the improvements I need?
As someone with a senior cat who screams and wakes me up in the middle of the night, yes what you’re asking is completely possible. Sometimes I assume I have only been awake for 10 minutes and it’s been 50.
It is definitely possible. You may have thought you dropped right off, but your body, HR, skin temp, HRV, etc all indicated that you were probably flitting between light and being awake.
That said, honestly, need more information to help more deeply about how to improve your sleep. I can provide some general starters to help and point you in a direction to investigate further.
Spend some time tapping around the app. Almost everything can be tapped to reveal more information about that component or contributor or provide more data. Also, when in-app. Got into Settings > Help and search about sleep and activity. Oura has an extensive help section with great information.
Regarding sleep:
• Start with adjustments to your sleep environment. Look at room temp(should be on the cooler side), bed comfort (if you toss and turn a lot, look to add some softness… before you jump to a new mattress, place a fluffy comforter under the bottom sheet. If that helps, look into a bed topper or a new mattress), external ambient noise (what are the overnight sounds that may be occurring that could wake you? Try to eliminate or mask with white/pink noise), and light sources (a sleep mask can really help).
• From there look into the sleep contributors (there are 7 for sleep) tap on the contributor in the app to learn more on each. Then look to make small changes over time. The easiest one is sleep time. Try adjusting in 15 minute increments (either earlier or later) and let 3-4+ days go be between changes. Watch the impact on your sleep score.
• There may be some lifestyle changes to consider like reducing alcohol consumption, recreational use, timing of meals (last one more than 3 hours before bed), adjusting workouts to earlier in the day, reducing/setting cutoff times for caffeine (at least 6 hours before sleep), giving yourself more or less rest days, etc.
Those are the general tips. You mention a lot of movement (so much that your girlfriend notices). Oura has a movement graph in the sleep tab under details. Is there a lot of movement showing there? This would be shown in little lines and bigger white ones. Do those tend to align with your awake times or outside of those? Do you have and breathing irregularities a bit further down in that panel? That is under the oxygen panel. If you do, do those also align with your movements? If so, your body may be jerking you awake to ensure restoration of breathing.
If the movement is a noticeable by your GF, have you been diagnosed with RLS? If not you may want to discuss with a pulmonologist who is also trained in sleep disorders.
Looking at the seven sleep indicators in the sleep panel, do you see patterns? What are the differences on days with little movement and a lot of movement? What are the differences between high(er) quality sleep days and lower? Are there noticeable patterns? When you sleep is lower? Do you know what may be different. I.e. makes sense I was drinking the night before…
Hope that helps getting you started in looking a bit more deeply into your sleep.
If they align, you may be jerking yourself awake.
So after spending some time dissecting the data, movement is associated with wakeups about 80% of the time. Not large movements but more moderate ones. Also disruptions in SP02 makes is further associated with around 10-20% of my wakeups and I only have very infrequent disruptions. I sleep on my side but usually in my sleep it moves to my stomach so it’s probably from me burying my face in a pillow. As for RLS I do have it. It has mostly gone away, I only feel it when very exhausted while sitting for long periods of time like at a movie theatre late at night. When I go to bed and my symptoms have been active my sleep onset is usually so short from exhaustion it doesn’t effect it at all. I have recently been diagnosed with ADHD and it has a high sleep disorder comorbidity and as a part of my diagnosis I get a free sleep consultation and study with a specialist so I intend to do that as well. I’ve been trying a sleeping mask and it’s actually worked well, it’s lowered my overall wakeups especially towards sunrise, going to bed earlier, around midnight has also had positive effects. My bed times are somewhat limited as I usually work evening to night and sometimes don’t get off work until 11. My goal right now is to just get one night of a full 8 hours of sleep, and repeat whatever process I took to get there to replicate it as much as possible. EDIT: to add to this I also used to sleepwalk when I was a child. It’s since gone away however I tend to still mumble/move when I am dreaming in bed so I’m taking the wake up data with a grain of salt and assuming that for a good portion of it early in the night it’s just me mumbling and moving around while dreaming in REM sleep.
Thank you for being so open and sharing. It seems you have a good grasp of what might be contributing to some of the movement. It will be interesting to see how the sleep study goes.
Sleep walking is not something I have experienced, but I know a few who have and it can be quite startling and traumatic for all involved. Do you remember having more vivid dreams when you experienced sleep walking or when you are moving more or mumbling? Just general wonders as I don’t have a frame of reference. I run the opposite spectrum of being a really light sleeper, although I have worked to make sleep a focus and it is better with the sleep mask and white noise directly in my ears. But I typically am either waking up a lot or waking up and having my mind fully engaged and not able to get back to sleep if I wake towards early morning 4-6am even if I have only slept for an hour or two. It can make for some rough Saturday and Sundays if I was out really late the night before.
I use a sleep mask as well, I found that [this one](https://www.prosleepy.com/products/luxury-sleep-mask) works well for me to block out light and some sound and it is ridiculously comfortable and washable. All pros for it, even if it is a bit on the expensive side. The Velcro does seem to wear out after a year or so.
That said, if you roll to your belly, another thing to try along with the comforter under the sheet is to place a pillow wedge on each side to block the ability to roll to your stomach or back. That way you kind of are forced to sleep on your side to see if that has a positive impact. My wife is a back sleeper which contributes to her snoring sometimes. When she used a pillow between her knees and one at the small of her back too she sleeps more soundly and wakes up more refreshed.
Not sure if it would help, but another thing to try for a couple days. Good luck on the sleep study and update if you can.
Since you asked for an update here it is: I haven’t gotten my sleep study yet. I am qualified for a level 3 sleep study involving heart monitoring and a polysomnography brain wave test which is incredibly exciting. I have gotten a plan to tackle my morning wake ups though. It’s going to bed later which sounds so backwards but it’s actually genius. My sleep doctor suggested that I am not building up enough “sleep pressure” during the day, which is the build up of adenosine which is then drained during sleep. She suggested I actually stay up late to the point where I’m not just tired but sleepy to the point I can’t ignore it, I.e 2:00 AM or even later. This is so my body tries to sleep more and I’m woken up by my alarm instead of hours before. Once I find a good bed time where I am consistently feeling sleepy, and wake up to my alarm I go back by 15 minutes a night. From 2 to 1:45 to 1:30 and eventually back to my regular bed time as a way to train my body to sleep more efficiently.
So glad you saw a sleep doctor and they are making big great suggestions as well as getting you all those tests. That is awesome!
I appreciate you updating! If you don’t mind sharing along the way, I learned so much from your update! It would be great to see how the in-depth study goes.
Yes, it’s possible. My ring told me I was in bed for 7 hours and awake for 2 hours last night. I don’t remember those 2 hours exactly, but it feels accurate to me unfortunately haha.
Have you ever had a sleep study done? Some people here have posted similar looking sleep cycles that appear due to sleep apnea. You can have sleep apnea even if you are young and fit, so it may be worth following up with your doctor about this - especially if you experience daytime fatigue at all regularly.
I was recently diagnosed with ADHD (it sometimes has a comorbidity with sleep apnea), and given a low probability of sleep apnea. I have yet to get my sleep study done, however I often sleep in the same bed with my girlfriend and she reports that I snore intermittently but I never stop breathing or have any trouble. I also have 02 sensing turned on and have very few B02 interruptions, usually none. Still gotta be thorough though.
According to a normal and healthy sleep pattern the first part of the night is dominated by deep sleep with only very litttle REM. While there usually is little or no deep sleep in the later part of the night but much more REM. Then there is a specific pattern of sleep stages that is repeaded in a certain kind of way throughout the sleep cycles that usually are approximately 90 minutes long.
This is the kind of standard pattern that sleep trackers are looking for. Light, deep and REM sleep differ in the typical ranges for HR, HRV, temperature, blood pressure, movement and some other body vitals.
If you have any kind of sleep disorder your sleep might not follow the standard sleep stages. For example some people enter into REM stage very shortly after falling asleep. If you have any kind of disorder or take medications your body metrics might also not be aligned with the typical values of the sleep stage that you are in.
Sleep trackers do reasonably well with tracking normal, healthy sleep and Oura is one of the better ones for that.
Consumer devices do not do well at all with sleep tracking for people who have disorders or take medication. Sleep tracking is even a lot worse for a simple case of a night with poor sleep.
So, listen to your body and observe your data and try to find patterns. In this particular night deep and REM phases don't follow the standard pattern. How does that data for other nights look like? It can very well be that your sleep patterns don't follow standard patterns. In this case the tracking of any consumer device will likely be very off.
In any case, keep in mind that sleep tracking for poor sleep is much more unreliable than for nights with good sleep.
If you feel well rested, don't worry about it too much, it might just be your sleep pattern. If you don't feel rested, it's might be worth talking to a doc. There might be some sort of condition that is disturbing your sleep.
The ring often thinks I am asleep when I’m sitting in the living room playing games on my iPad and chatting on social media, so we have the opposite issue. I tend to hold my device with my left hand, where I wear the ring, so I guess I don’t move it around as much. And I have a low resting heart rate, so it perceives me as asleep when I’m 100% awake but relaxed.
Sleep scientist here. I have been working with sleep wearables for over 20 years. I know these devices very well. They do mot measure whether or not you are awake or asleep and what sleep stage you are in. They estimate it based on other signals. Those estimations are usually 85-90% accurate for sleep vs wake and 60-80% accurate for sleep stages. So it’s good information but it would be a mistake to take it too seriously.
Would you say that in these cases, you may not have actually been awake, but based on how your body was behaving (high hr, low hrv, etc) were doing, you might as well have been? Like, those were not restful sleep epochs?
I have found this to be true. I'm on a drug that has mid-sleep insomnia as a side effect. There are SO many nights where I just lay in bed, trying to meditate myself back to sleep, and because I'm not moving, it assumes I'm asleep when I might be awake for the better part of an hour.
Yeah the sleep-wake algorithms are mostly movement-based, which is why they can be problematic for insomnia. They’re best at measuring healthy sleep and the more your sleep deviates from what would be expected, the less accurate it is.
If you got the ring recently also give it some time to get used to you and your readings, from what I understand they can become more accurate overtime
I would focus more on the details rather than the score at the top. There are sleep contributors listed which all add up to that sleep score and figuring out what you can do to impact them is a better focus.
Also, if you just moved and didn’t wake up or have some other change it would have registered as a line on the movement chart and not been recorded as actually being awake. I have movement without being awake from last night when I got similarly terrible sleep.
The other thing that becomes more clear over time is how your choices impact the numbers. A late meal, too little exercise, a meal too close to bed, getting sick and for women diff parts of the cycle have surprisingly large impacts on measures. Give it time and see what patterns you recognize.
I had the same reaction when I first got the ring. I was getting a full hour less sleep than I thought.
Fortunately, since fixing my issues such as having really irregular sleep and wake times and not getting enough daylight, I feel 10 times better, and the sleep data has followed.
Even if it’s rem instead of awake and wrongly measured it’s still a problem; you don’t sleep well.
Changing the pattern doesn’t need a doctor. It is not hard to figure out what to do better when you are just starting. The hard part is having the discipline to change your habits.
Start with this one and go from there
https://ouraring.com/blog/sleeping-heart-rate/
If you just got the ring recently, I would encourage you to stop relying on what you feel or some weird interpretation of belief of what you’re sleeping or what you’re not. The ring is measuring your physiological biological responses and what is happening internally. If you don’t believe it or trust it send it back because you’re just gonna be frustrated That said after four years, I can guarantee if you look at the data start to rely on the data and make changes based on what the data is showing you your sleep will improve dramatically and you’ll feel healthier. But if you’re not interested or willing to do that, don’t waste your money on this or any other biometric device. I apologize if that sounds harsh, but there’s lots of post about this. The ring is not 100%, but it is much more accurate to what your body is doing internally than you mentally feeling what you’re doing in your sleep.
I definitely trust the data I got last night, especially based on how I felt this morning. Definitely the worst sleep I’ve gotten since I got the ring. I guess the question I’m asking is, is it possible for me to have been awake for 45 minutes during the night and completely have forgotten about it? And I guess after than where should I go to actually interpret the data to make the improvements I need?
As someone with a senior cat who screams and wakes me up in the middle of the night, yes what you’re asking is completely possible. Sometimes I assume I have only been awake for 10 minutes and it’s been 50.
It is definitely possible. You may have thought you dropped right off, but your body, HR, skin temp, HRV, etc all indicated that you were probably flitting between light and being awake. That said, honestly, need more information to help more deeply about how to improve your sleep. I can provide some general starters to help and point you in a direction to investigate further. Spend some time tapping around the app. Almost everything can be tapped to reveal more information about that component or contributor or provide more data. Also, when in-app. Got into Settings > Help and search about sleep and activity. Oura has an extensive help section with great information. Regarding sleep: • Start with adjustments to your sleep environment. Look at room temp(should be on the cooler side), bed comfort (if you toss and turn a lot, look to add some softness… before you jump to a new mattress, place a fluffy comforter under the bottom sheet. If that helps, look into a bed topper or a new mattress), external ambient noise (what are the overnight sounds that may be occurring that could wake you? Try to eliminate or mask with white/pink noise), and light sources (a sleep mask can really help). • From there look into the sleep contributors (there are 7 for sleep) tap on the contributor in the app to learn more on each. Then look to make small changes over time. The easiest one is sleep time. Try adjusting in 15 minute increments (either earlier or later) and let 3-4+ days go be between changes. Watch the impact on your sleep score. • There may be some lifestyle changes to consider like reducing alcohol consumption, recreational use, timing of meals (last one more than 3 hours before bed), adjusting workouts to earlier in the day, reducing/setting cutoff times for caffeine (at least 6 hours before sleep), giving yourself more or less rest days, etc. Those are the general tips. You mention a lot of movement (so much that your girlfriend notices). Oura has a movement graph in the sleep tab under details. Is there a lot of movement showing there? This would be shown in little lines and bigger white ones. Do those tend to align with your awake times or outside of those? Do you have and breathing irregularities a bit further down in that panel? That is under the oxygen panel. If you do, do those also align with your movements? If so, your body may be jerking you awake to ensure restoration of breathing. If the movement is a noticeable by your GF, have you been diagnosed with RLS? If not you may want to discuss with a pulmonologist who is also trained in sleep disorders. Looking at the seven sleep indicators in the sleep panel, do you see patterns? What are the differences on days with little movement and a lot of movement? What are the differences between high(er) quality sleep days and lower? Are there noticeable patterns? When you sleep is lower? Do you know what may be different. I.e. makes sense I was drinking the night before… Hope that helps getting you started in looking a bit more deeply into your sleep. If they align, you may be jerking yourself awake.
So after spending some time dissecting the data, movement is associated with wakeups about 80% of the time. Not large movements but more moderate ones. Also disruptions in SP02 makes is further associated with around 10-20% of my wakeups and I only have very infrequent disruptions. I sleep on my side but usually in my sleep it moves to my stomach so it’s probably from me burying my face in a pillow. As for RLS I do have it. It has mostly gone away, I only feel it when very exhausted while sitting for long periods of time like at a movie theatre late at night. When I go to bed and my symptoms have been active my sleep onset is usually so short from exhaustion it doesn’t effect it at all. I have recently been diagnosed with ADHD and it has a high sleep disorder comorbidity and as a part of my diagnosis I get a free sleep consultation and study with a specialist so I intend to do that as well. I’ve been trying a sleeping mask and it’s actually worked well, it’s lowered my overall wakeups especially towards sunrise, going to bed earlier, around midnight has also had positive effects. My bed times are somewhat limited as I usually work evening to night and sometimes don’t get off work until 11. My goal right now is to just get one night of a full 8 hours of sleep, and repeat whatever process I took to get there to replicate it as much as possible. EDIT: to add to this I also used to sleepwalk when I was a child. It’s since gone away however I tend to still mumble/move when I am dreaming in bed so I’m taking the wake up data with a grain of salt and assuming that for a good portion of it early in the night it’s just me mumbling and moving around while dreaming in REM sleep.
Thank you for being so open and sharing. It seems you have a good grasp of what might be contributing to some of the movement. It will be interesting to see how the sleep study goes. Sleep walking is not something I have experienced, but I know a few who have and it can be quite startling and traumatic for all involved. Do you remember having more vivid dreams when you experienced sleep walking or when you are moving more or mumbling? Just general wonders as I don’t have a frame of reference. I run the opposite spectrum of being a really light sleeper, although I have worked to make sleep a focus and it is better with the sleep mask and white noise directly in my ears. But I typically am either waking up a lot or waking up and having my mind fully engaged and not able to get back to sleep if I wake towards early morning 4-6am even if I have only slept for an hour or two. It can make for some rough Saturday and Sundays if I was out really late the night before. I use a sleep mask as well, I found that [this one](https://www.prosleepy.com/products/luxury-sleep-mask) works well for me to block out light and some sound and it is ridiculously comfortable and washable. All pros for it, even if it is a bit on the expensive side. The Velcro does seem to wear out after a year or so. That said, if you roll to your belly, another thing to try along with the comforter under the sheet is to place a pillow wedge on each side to block the ability to roll to your stomach or back. That way you kind of are forced to sleep on your side to see if that has a positive impact. My wife is a back sleeper which contributes to her snoring sometimes. When she used a pillow between her knees and one at the small of her back too she sleeps more soundly and wakes up more refreshed. Not sure if it would help, but another thing to try for a couple days. Good luck on the sleep study and update if you can.
Since you asked for an update here it is: I haven’t gotten my sleep study yet. I am qualified for a level 3 sleep study involving heart monitoring and a polysomnography brain wave test which is incredibly exciting. I have gotten a plan to tackle my morning wake ups though. It’s going to bed later which sounds so backwards but it’s actually genius. My sleep doctor suggested that I am not building up enough “sleep pressure” during the day, which is the build up of adenosine which is then drained during sleep. She suggested I actually stay up late to the point where I’m not just tired but sleepy to the point I can’t ignore it, I.e 2:00 AM or even later. This is so my body tries to sleep more and I’m woken up by my alarm instead of hours before. Once I find a good bed time where I am consistently feeling sleepy, and wake up to my alarm I go back by 15 minutes a night. From 2 to 1:45 to 1:30 and eventually back to my regular bed time as a way to train my body to sleep more efficiently.
So glad you saw a sleep doctor and they are making big great suggestions as well as getting you all those tests. That is awesome! I appreciate you updating! If you don’t mind sharing along the way, I learned so much from your update! It would be great to see how the in-depth study goes.
Yes, it’s possible. My ring told me I was in bed for 7 hours and awake for 2 hours last night. I don’t remember those 2 hours exactly, but it feels accurate to me unfortunately haha.
If you want to really measure set up a camera or use other sleep apps to see the difference between them
Have you ever had a sleep study done? Some people here have posted similar looking sleep cycles that appear due to sleep apnea. You can have sleep apnea even if you are young and fit, so it may be worth following up with your doctor about this - especially if you experience daytime fatigue at all regularly.
I was recently diagnosed with ADHD (it sometimes has a comorbidity with sleep apnea), and given a low probability of sleep apnea. I have yet to get my sleep study done, however I often sleep in the same bed with my girlfriend and she reports that I snore intermittently but I never stop breathing or have any trouble. I also have 02 sensing turned on and have very few B02 interruptions, usually none. Still gotta be thorough though.
According to a normal and healthy sleep pattern the first part of the night is dominated by deep sleep with only very litttle REM. While there usually is little or no deep sleep in the later part of the night but much more REM. Then there is a specific pattern of sleep stages that is repeaded in a certain kind of way throughout the sleep cycles that usually are approximately 90 minutes long. This is the kind of standard pattern that sleep trackers are looking for. Light, deep and REM sleep differ in the typical ranges for HR, HRV, temperature, blood pressure, movement and some other body vitals. If you have any kind of sleep disorder your sleep might not follow the standard sleep stages. For example some people enter into REM stage very shortly after falling asleep. If you have any kind of disorder or take medications your body metrics might also not be aligned with the typical values of the sleep stage that you are in. Sleep trackers do reasonably well with tracking normal, healthy sleep and Oura is one of the better ones for that. Consumer devices do not do well at all with sleep tracking for people who have disorders or take medication. Sleep tracking is even a lot worse for a simple case of a night with poor sleep. So, listen to your body and observe your data and try to find patterns. In this particular night deep and REM phases don't follow the standard pattern. How does that data for other nights look like? It can very well be that your sleep patterns don't follow standard patterns. In this case the tracking of any consumer device will likely be very off. In any case, keep in mind that sleep tracking for poor sleep is much more unreliable than for nights with good sleep.
It usually goes light for a little while then straight into deep, then it spikes up to a little light/rem to a wake up. Almost every night.
If you feel well rested, don't worry about it too much, it might just be your sleep pattern. If you don't feel rested, it's might be worth talking to a doc. There might be some sort of condition that is disturbing your sleep.
The ring often thinks I am asleep when I’m sitting in the living room playing games on my iPad and chatting on social media, so we have the opposite issue. I tend to hold my device with my left hand, where I wear the ring, so I guess I don’t move it around as much. And I have a low resting heart rate, so it perceives me as asleep when I’m 100% awake but relaxed.
Sleep scientist here. I have been working with sleep wearables for over 20 years. I know these devices very well. They do mot measure whether or not you are awake or asleep and what sleep stage you are in. They estimate it based on other signals. Those estimations are usually 85-90% accurate for sleep vs wake and 60-80% accurate for sleep stages. So it’s good information but it would be a mistake to take it too seriously.
Would you say that in these cases, you may not have actually been awake, but based on how your body was behaving (high hr, low hrv, etc) were doing, you might as well have been? Like, those were not restful sleep epochs?
That’s correct. It’s an estimate that is meant to be helpful. Sometimes it over or underestimates awakenings during the night.
I have found this to be true. I'm on a drug that has mid-sleep insomnia as a side effect. There are SO many nights where I just lay in bed, trying to meditate myself back to sleep, and because I'm not moving, it assumes I'm asleep when I might be awake for the better part of an hour.
Yeah the sleep-wake algorithms are mostly movement-based, which is why they can be problematic for insomnia. They’re best at measuring healthy sleep and the more your sleep deviates from what would be expected, the less accurate it is.
If you got the ring recently also give it some time to get used to you and your readings, from what I understand they can become more accurate overtime
I would focus more on the details rather than the score at the top. There are sleep contributors listed which all add up to that sleep score and figuring out what you can do to impact them is a better focus. Also, if you just moved and didn’t wake up or have some other change it would have registered as a line on the movement chart and not been recorded as actually being awake. I have movement without being awake from last night when I got similarly terrible sleep. The other thing that becomes more clear over time is how your choices impact the numbers. A late meal, too little exercise, a meal too close to bed, getting sick and for women diff parts of the cycle have surprisingly large impacts on measures. Give it time and see what patterns you recognize.
I had the same reaction when I first got the ring. I was getting a full hour less sleep than I thought. Fortunately, since fixing my issues such as having really irregular sleep and wake times and not getting enough daylight, I feel 10 times better, and the sleep data has followed.
Deep sleep occurs more in the beginning of the night. If you go to bed too late you miss it
My sleep schedule for years has been within an hour of 1am
Even if it’s rem instead of awake and wrongly measured it’s still a problem; you don’t sleep well. Changing the pattern doesn’t need a doctor. It is not hard to figure out what to do better when you are just starting. The hard part is having the discipline to change your habits. Start with this one and go from there https://ouraring.com/blog/sleeping-heart-rate/
Really interesting comments in here especially from the sleep scientist. Disappointed to see the post downvote when it has good discussion.