{"id":60269,"date":"2025-10-02T08:59:46","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T11:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/?p=60269"},"modified":"2025-10-02T08:59:46","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T11:59:46","slug":"sono-nota-apple-polissonografia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/en\/sono-nota-apple-polissonografia\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s impossible to evaluate your sleep with only one number"},"content":{"rendered":"

iOS 26 brought a new score to the Health app: sleep quality. (It\u2019s not exclusive to the Apple Watch; any band or watch compatible with iOS can contribute to that number.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m skeptical of scores like this. It\u2019s reductive and can be misleading to assign a single score to something as complex as sleep. And, in a great irony, my numbers (!) kind of prove that.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago I dug a band out of a drawer \u2014 a Huawei Band 8 \u2014 and started wearing it again. I\u2019ve been more committed to working out and, especially for cardio, it\u2019s useful to have heart rate visible in real time.<\/p>\n

I chose this band partly because of the heart-rate sensor accuracy shown in tests by the channel The Quantified Scientist<\/a>. It\u2019s an honest, lightweight band that goes unnoticed, which led me to keep it on my wrist when I go to bed. Its long lasting battery helps as well.<\/p>\n

Both Huawei\u2019s app (which is\u2026 passable) and Apple Health indicate high-quality sleep. In nearly a month of recorded nights, Apple classifies my sleep as \u201cExcellent,\u201d with several days scoring above 95 (the scale runs from 0 to 100).<\/p>\n

Huawei gave me an 82 for my September nights. Its app offers insights that point out what could be improved (more deep sleep, fewer awakenings during the night).<\/p>\n

Someone looking at those numbers might think my sleep is wonderful. They\u2019re misleading numbers: I have bruxism and very light sleep, and I need medication to reduce jaw tension while I\u2019m out; otherwise I wake with my shoulders, neck and shoulder blades locked, sometimes painful and, even medicated, occasionally with a debilitating headache.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

One hypothesis for numbers so discrepant from reality is that these bands and watches monitor only superficial aspects of sleep. Insomnia, sleep stages, how many times someone wakes during the night. The Apple Watch, one of the most advanced of its kind, also flags apnea, although it doesn\u2019t provide a diagnosis. Apple itself clarifies<\/a> that the alert refers to \u201csigns of sleep apnea\u201d and, if it appears, recommends seeing a doctor.<\/p>\n

Still, according to my hypothesis, less obvious aspects of sleep escape wrist-worn sensors. It takes other signals to detect bruxism and leg movements, for example.<\/p>\n

The \u201cgold standard\u201d test is called polysomnography. I\u2019m investigating the causes of my troubled sleep and mitigations for bruxism, and as part of that process I spent a night in a clinic hooked to a computer with wires and electrodes. You can\u2019t compare a watch, however advanced, to this:<\/p>\n

\"Selfie
It’s kind of hard to sleep like this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The results are detailed. Too detailed, to the point of being hard for a layperson to read. (The report\u2019s conclusion does a good job of \u201ctranslating\u201d the data.) It\u2019s a striking contrast with the reports generated by apps like Huawei\u2019s and Apple\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The downside of polysomnography is that, as a rule, the data come from one uncomfortable night (because of the gear attached to my body) in a strange place. For me, I managed about 6 hours of sleep during a 7h30 time in bed, a little below my at-home averages \u2014 according to Huawei, 6h57 and 7h16, respectively.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The push by tech companies into sleep (the same companies that have already colonized much of our waking time) catches my attention. There are startups focused on the topic, like Arianna Huffington\u2019s Thrive Global and Eight Sleep, which sells \u201cpods\u201d (connected mattresses and bedding) and claims on its site that \u201cmembers experience up to 25% more deep sleep.\u201d Nothing like numbers to convince you to buy!<\/p>\n

While drafting this column I remembered a book by American author Jonathan Crary, 24\/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep<\/cite>, published in 2013. For Crary,<\/p>\n

Sleep is the only remaining barrier, the only persistent \u201cnatural condition\u201d that capitalism cannot eliminate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is it still?<\/p>\n

In my limited view, I don\u2019t believe sleep difficulties are (only) an \u201cexternality\u201d of capitalism. Other factors \u2014 genetic, for example \u2014 must share the blame. It would be naive, however, to dismiss Crary\u2019s argument, who throughout the book cites the excess of screens (in 2013!) as one of the recent behavioral changes over the past decades that undermine sleep.<\/p>\n

Sleep coincides with the metabolization of what we ingest during the day: drugs, alcohol, all the debris of interaction with bright screens; but also the flood of anxieties, fears, doubts, desires, fantasies of total failure or success. This is the monotony of sleep and insomnia, night after night. In its repetition and honesty, it is one of the irreducible remnants of everyday life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Exams, consultations, smart watches and bands are not free. Perhaps the market has indeed sunk its teeth into sleep and, following a familiar playbook, is selling individual solutions to a systemic problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

iOS 26 brought a new score to the Health app: sleep quality. (It\u2019s not exclusive to the Apple Watch; any band or watch compatible with iOS can contribute to that number.) I\u2019m skeptical of scores like this. It\u2019s reductive and can be misleading to assign a single score to something as complex as sleep. And, in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_locale":"en_US","_original_post":""},"categories":[1575],"tags":[1818],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60269"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60273,"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60269\/revisions\/60273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}