If you find yourself waking up often, gasping for air, or feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck the next morning, it may be time to talk about sleep apnea with your doctor.
Monitoring sleep apnea can be important for your health, and today’s technology makes it easier than ever. Sometimes, all you need is a smartphone, a fitness tracker, or heart monitor!
When it comes to sleep apnea monitoring, wearable devices are becoming quite popular, but how do they compare? Do you choose the Oura Ring or the Fitbit for sleep apnea monitoring? What’s the best app to monitor sleep apnea? How does an Apple Watch stack up to Samsung Health to monitor sleep apnea?
Keeping Score of Your Snores
These days, technology has completely revolutionized the way we are able to keep track of sleep apnea. A simple app on your phone or wearable device can watch your sleep patterns, measure blood oxygen levels, and even detect disruptions that might hint at underlying issues.
Tools like the Oura Ring or Fitbit use sensors to monitor everything from your heart rate variability to your breathing, helping to identify possible red flags and giving you critical data to share with your doctor.
What Tech to Choose?
Choosing the right tech or app to monitor your sleep apnea depends on your needs, budget, and how deep you want to dive into your sleep data. Here are a few options currently on the market:
- Oura Ring: Offers detailed reports on sleep stages, heart rate variability, and blood oxygen levels
- Fitbit: More advanced models track similar metrics as the Oura Ring, including daily readiness scores
- Apple Watch: The latest watches track sleep patterns, heart rate, and blood oxygen levels, and provide a holistic view of overall wellbeing
- Galaxy Watch: Has similar features to the Apple Watch, including sleep tracking, heart rate monitoring, and blood oxygen reading
App and Tech Monitoring Limits
These apps and gadgets can be quite cool, but let’s not assume that they’re the ultimate sleep apnea experts. They can give you a general sense of your sleep patterns and flag issues like snoring or low oxygen levels, but they’re not your doctor. To get a full sleep apnea diagnosis, you’ll probably have to talk to your doctor and undergo a sleep study.
What does that process entail? During a sleep study, sensors are placed on your body to monitor things like your brain waves, heart rate, oxygen levels, and breathing patterns while you sleep. The results will give your doctor a clearer look at whether you’ve got sleep apnea or if you’re simply a snorer.
From there, they’ll be able to work with you on finding a treatment plan that works best for you.
Feeling Stuck with Sleep Apnea?
Once you’ve received that dreaded diagnosis, you may feel stuck. Are you really going to be snoring forever or wearing an uncomfortable CPAP machine for eternity? The truth is, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
At Optimal Circadian Health, we recognize that there are many different options for relief. Training your breath through new breathing routines, eating a healthy diet, exercising more, resetting your nervous system, or improving your sleep hygiene can all help.
Our book, Sleep Apnea Solution, covers all that and more! It’s our mission to help you find relief that works for you, because sleep is sacred, and you deserve a good night’s rest.
