Sleep talk now online

[mattbell]

My talk on Sleep Hacking from the May Quantified Self is now online. Thanks, Alexandra!

Matt Bell - Hacking the Sleep/Wake Cycle from Loren Risker on Vimeo.

Comments

[tenacious-snail.livejournal.com]

this is useful stuff. Thanks.

Emotiv Headset

[(Anonymous)]

"You can never have too much data."

Check out http://www.emotiv.com/apps/applications/131/724

Re: Emotiv Headset

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

I tried a Neurosky a few months ago and found the data to be close to useless. Is the data quality on the Emotiv better?

Re: Emotiv Headset

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Also, if you're in the San Francisco area and have one, I'd love to borrow it.

[sarcazm.livejournal.com]

i really like this actually. i'm not sure how some of the graphical analysis would work though in excel, since a lot of it seems based on pretty subjective variables and personal adjectives. for example, how did you measure things like being "happier"? also, you mentioned exciting social interactions affecting sleep latency. now, in your case, since this is what you measure, social interactions were the key problem. but what about other elements that perhaps didn't involve other people, but provided the same level of excitement, did you try? did you achieve the same effects or different?

i have DSPS and have suffered from insomnia since i was a little kid, and have run the gamut with testing, so i'm ultra-curious. i would totally like to see you play lab rat with this machine a bit more, and post your findings.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

All the subjective metrics were self-reported at the end of the day. They can be tricky... if I had a really good day that went sour in the last hour, how do I rate that? I currently sort of average it out.

I don't have enough data on it, but I'm guessing exciting non-social events late at night would have the same effect. If my brain really gets turned on after 10pm for whatever reason, it's hard to turn it off.

[sarcazm.livejournal.com]

i was taught from two different schools of thought, in regards to latency, in very simple terms you can either bore yourself to sleep or tire yourself out. essentially, i guess what i would compare it to is trying to match those rates that the zeo claimed you had already achieved when it said you were sleeping while you were awake, for the former. whatever those levels were, maybe that's the optimum on that end. on the other hand, over-stimulation, whether physical or mental or both, never worked. i just turned into the energizer friggin' bunny and set myself up for a good solid days of 3-5 days without sleeping. meanwhile, achieving that zen-like state of almost asleep but not quite there yet boredom? haven't quite mastered that one yet, so that i can trick my body into thinking my brain is already asleep so that it can follow suit. or maybe it's tricking the brain into thinking the body is asleep, i'm not sure.

Question

[(Anonymous)]

Hey Matt. Thanks for the video review of the Zeo! so helpful.

I'm about to buy this thing and I was wondering if you'd be willing to answer two questions for me:

1) Are you able to find a correlation between sleep architecture patterns and how refreshed you feel the next day?
This would be encouraging to me because it implies that the zeo is accurate and precise enough to be helpful. (EEG requires so much artifact removal that I never really trust the data)

2) I'm primarily interested in zeo's ability to correctly track deep sleep. Any light you can shed on how well it does this?

Thanks!
-tom

Re: Question

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

(1) I don't track "refreshed" but I do track "engaged" (how focused I felt) and "happy". Interestingly, there was not a strong correlation between Zeo's "ZQ" measurement and how I felt the next day on either of these metrics. I think there might be multiple factors contributing to this that cancel one another out:
- If I'm excited about some big event the next day (which will tend to raise happiness and engagement) I'm often up late preparing for it, or the excitement prevents me from getting to sleep earlier.
- However, if I sleep poorly (in general) I'm going to be more tired the next day, which would be expected to lower happiness and engagement.

(2) I can't attest to its accuracy at tracking track deep sleep directly, but the patterns of when deep sleep occurs for me tend to match what you see in sleep architecture diagrams in textbooks. The data certainly is somewhat noisy, but the similarity to what sleep architecture *should* look like gives me some confidence. Zeo does appear to be more liberal in labeling sleep as deep sleep than the human graders in my sleep study.

Re: Question

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for your input Matt.
Much appreciated!

I'm going to go order the zeo off amazon today.

-tom

Sleeptracker

[janet lai chang (from livejournal.com)]

Hey Matt,

Have you tried/heard of the SleepTracker watch? Someone made a blog recording their experience with polyphasic (both Uberman and Dymaxion, I believe) sleep adaptation, and it was interesting to know that it might make sleep-time-deprived days easier, given that the watch monitors sleep stages and wakes you up at accordingly good/easy times.

By the way, I found your blog after hearing (and getting excited) about Peter Theil's new Foundation for "20 people under age 20", then finding our mutual interests in sleep, health care and Patri's seasteading, AND moving to the Bay Area recently (coincidence?).

I still need to read through the proliferating comments in your health care post...

Re: Sleeptracker

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Good to meet you.

I'm guessing the SleepTracker uses actigraphy, which is just body motion. Actigraphy is less accurate for sleep stage measurement than EEG, but it's great for detecting movement and snoring. I'm currently doing a side-by-side comparison of the Zeo and the FitBit, which is similar to the SleepTracker.

I do think the polyphasic sleep people are kind of nuts as I haven't met a single person who's strictly adhered to it for more than a month. Almost everyone I know who's done it admits that they take naps periodically or occasionally "crash" to supplement the sleep regimen.

Also, clicking through to your facebook profile, it appears we went to the same high school. Yes, the bay area is great for filtering by interest. Not a coincidence. :-)

Re: Sleeptracker

[janet lai chang (from livejournal.com)]

Fitbit seems like it would be great for people who want to track their daytime activities in addition to sleeptime metrics. I think the main perks for Sleeptracker is the portability, which Fitbit offers, and being able to know the time. Zeo does neither, but is more precise as you've knowledgeably pointed out.

In a Google search for "sleeptracker vs (zeo)", before I could type in zeo, Google suggested "sleeptracker vs. axbo", which you may or may not have heard of (I hadn't!). Axbo looks like another alarm system that uses wristbands and a sensor for tracking...

Anyway I'm sure everyone would like to know how your Zeo vs Fitbit experiment goes in the near future!

There are too many "Matt Bell"s to make it easy enough to find you on Facebook, but if you'd like to converse more, feel free to shoot a quick email to janetlaichang@gmail.com.

Cheers!
Janet

Re: Sleeptracker

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard of the axbo. Good to know.