Smartwatches are also known as wearables. They are increasingly the norm among individuals concerned with sleep and health. The smart watches have various sensors that check important vitals such as heart rate and the number of steps you take in a day. But can they also track your sleep and is it really good for your health or sleep? In this blog, we provide the answer.
What can a smartwatch do?
What all you can do with a smartwatch depends on your budget. Some are simple pedometers, while other smartwatches include every possible feature. In general, you can track things like your heart rate, monitor physical activity and, of course, track your sleep.
We start right off with a disclaimer, because not everyone understands the information a smartwatch gives you, let alone the information you get is correct. Therefore, it is possible to become obsessed with the results. This is referred to today as orthosomnia. The mental pressure and tension that can arise when you focus too much on sleep actually causes you to sleep worse and can eventually even lead to disrupted sleep.
Of course, this does not mean that you cannot use a smartwatch to improve your health. For example, a recent study by the Cardiovascular Data Science lab at Yale suggests that there is a group of people who would benefit tremendously from a smartwatch, but instead do not use it. More on this later.
Can a smartwatch provide better sleep?
Most smartwatches can also track your sleep patterns, provided, of course, that you wear the smartwatch at night. Indeed, the watch claims to measure when you are deep asleep, or lightly asleep. The watch can also detect if you have woken up and, of course, how long you sleep. Really distinguishing between sleep stages, that’s really not the case yet. The sensors are incomplete and too limited to do this properly. The time in that you spend in deep sleep and REM sleep is shining nicely in your app, but rest assured that the numbers are seriously off from reality.
All this data is nice to see and can obviously help with the diagnosis of poor sleep. However, you can also blind yourself to the numbers and graphs when your sleep may be fine. And more importantly, there is a lot of information missing that you can measure with a real sleep measurement, the polysomnography. The lack of an EEG measurement, for example, means that you really have to be careful with what your smartwatch tells you.
Everyone has their own need for sleep. A smartwatch can tell you if you are sleeping too much or too little, but this can vary from person to person. For example, it matters a lot what age you are. Your physical condition and also your mental health can play a role.
So don’t stare blindly at a smartwatch’s sleep data. Especially if you already sleep poorly, it is better to leave the watch off. Keep a sleep diary in consultation with a doctor, sleep coach or sleep expert and trust your body. The data are simply too inaccurate to give you good, expert advice.
It can be a very useful tool to make your sleep more insightful, but make sure you remain realistic about the results and your expectations. Also, the smartwatch band has an impact on the precision of heart rate measurement. Keep in mind that the data are never 100 percent accurate.
Why don’t unhealthy people use smart watches?
The reasons could be found in the age, education and income of people at risk of cardiovascular disease. The research was presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2022 conference in Chicago.
The study was conducted by Lovedeep Dhingra and colleagues. They analyzed health information from 9,303 US adults who responded to a 2019-2020 survey. It targeted participants with cardiovascular disease or at risk for cardiovascular disease, such as those with high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, smoking or obesity.
It looked at use among patients of different age groups, gender, education, income levels and various racial and ethnic groups. The analysis showed that people at risk for cardiovascular disease were less likely to use wearable devices.
Who does use them?
An estimated 3.6 million people with cardiovascular disease and 34.4 million people at risk of cardiovascular disease in the U.S. use wearables. That amounts to only 18% of all people with cardiovascular disease and 26% of all people at risk for cardiovascular disease.
By comparison, 29% of the total US adult population uses wearables. Only 12% of people with cardiovascular disease older than 65 use wearables, although it is estimated that half of all people with cardiovascular disease are older than 65.
In comparison, 17% of those with cardiovascular disease aged 50 to 64 reported using wearables, and 33% of those aged 18 to 49 with diagnosed cardiovascular disease used wearables.
While 22% of all people at risk of heart disease are 65 or older, only 14% of older patients at risk of heart disease use wearables.
People with cardiovascular disease with an annual household income of $50,000 or more are four times more likely to use wearables than those with an annual household income of less than $20,000.
Higher education, such as a university degree (post-baccalaureate degree) was associated with 3.6 times higher use of wearables than people with lower levels of education.
More than 80% of those at risk for cardiovascular disease responded that they would be willing to share the health information collected by their wearable device to improve their health care.
Differences in willingness to share health data among different demographic subgroups were small (age group, gender, race and ethnicity, education level and household income).
Conclusion
“We were surprised that people with cardiovascular disease were significantly less likely to use wearables than those without cardiovascular disease, suggesting that those who are most likely to benefit from these technologies seem less likely to use them,” Dhingra said.
“We must ensure that wearables reach the people who need them most by improving equal access and promoting wearables as health devices to improve health and reduce health disparities.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Hoe gezond is een smartwatch?
How healthy a smartwatch is depends completely on how you use it. You can get a lot of data from it about your activities and sports. Improving your sleep with a smartwatch is virtually impossible with today’s knowledge.
Is het dragen van een smartwatch ongezond?
Wearing a smartwatch is meant to see and possibly improve your health. However, you can also be fooled by the data, or become obsessed with it. So don’t let all the numbers and graphs guide you too much. Here’s how to avoid orthosomnia!
Hoe betrouwbaar is de slaapmonitor van een smartwatch?
How accurate the data is of your sleep depends on the smartwatch. Some models are better at this than others. Of course, price is also a factor here. Also, make sure your smartwatch is in good contact with your skin. Know that a real measurement actually requires a polysomnography, also your brain waves will be measured.
