A new sleep study has used 6.5 million recorded sleep sessions on Fitbit devices to investigate the effect that sleep has on our health.
A new study using Fitbit data has proven that sleep is good for you, which will come as a surprise to exactly no one. But the findings of the study into sleep quality and health outcomes have actually been pretty eye-opening – particularly in the effectiveness of wearables to longitudinally study our health.
A longitudinal study is a research design that involves repeated observations of the same variables (e.g., individuals, groups) over a prolonged period. This type of study is often used to observe changes over time and to identify causal relationships.
The study, which analyzed 6.5 million nights of sleep data from over 6,700 Fitbit users, over an average period of 4.5 years, found significant links between sleep patterns and health outcomes.
If you’re interested in how your sleep stacks up, participants typically got to sleep around 11:10 pm and got about 6.7 hrs during their main sleep period (i.e. not naps).
However, the study also found that good sleep reduced the odds of obesity and sleep apnea, with balanced sleep stages proving crucial for heart health and mental well-being.
Restless, inconsistent sleep, meanwhile, negatively impacted various conditions, while demographic differences and lifestyle factors were also found to influence sleep duration.
All in, the study shows us the potential of wearable data in large-scale, longitudinal health research.
That means the ability to track data over a longer period that can identify wider trends, but also factor in other lifestyle factors.
If you missed last week’s PULSE by Wareable newsletter, we talked to Evidation, a company that pays users for logging sleep data and uses it for longitudinal research. Read it here.
