I'm not keeping up with this blog, so long story short, I've been using an Oura Ring since August. I want to give some detailed attention to this at some point, but I can't right now. Way too exhausted. In short, it is a highly advanced sleep tracker that has generally received good ratings as far as accuracy goes, but I'll dig into that topic later. It's not like a Fit Bit or other trackers - it uses different technology and can read a lot more.
I want to show you what a night after a chemical exposure looks like for me. I came home from work feeling angry, fidgety, uncomfortable, and wanting to beat something up and smash it to pieces. I'm not totally sure what I was reacting to - normally I know right away if something is causing me reactivity, then will get a the worst reaction later on (delayed.) The fact that I was off my pills for 1.5 weeks and had only taken bare minimum to get by at work in the past 4 days has meant more reactions and reacting to lower exposures. Regardless, I was definitely reacting and was very uncomfortable. I went to bed with a resting heart rate jumping constantly between 95-120 while just laying still in bed.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1olRRgWgc-rXaF2KlDJ6Zi238W9sXiQ-zeA/view?usp=sharing
You will need to click the link below the photo to see it full size to be able to read it. Blogger has some serious formatting limitations and will not allow me to turn the image into a link unless I feel like coding it in HTML, but their HTML is one wall of text, not formatted so that I can easily find where to edit. I'm feeling way too lazy to deal with that.
First problem: 4 hours of REM sleep!? I've read that high REM can mean high stress levels on the body. More than 2 hours tends to be high, from what I've read. I'll link to the articles when I have the energy.
Second problem: Heart rate. Okay, my resting heart rate tends to be high anyway (and I'm getting officially tested for POTS soon, but a few medical practitioners have told me they've seen it when reading my pulse), but this is a bit absurd. During the first two weeks of my menstrual cycle my lowest heart rate of the night tends to be in the upper 60's to low 70's, with average in the 70's, sometimes low 80's. My lowest last night was 86 BPM. Average was 95 BPM. Highest was just below 110 (I wish it would give an exact number.) My body managed to lower my resting heart rate during sleep, but it still stayed too high. And I took pills that should calm my heart rate down - I did need herbs to fall asleep last night.
Third problem: My heart rate variability is super LOW. The higher the number, the better off you are. In my Oura Ring user group many people are reporting that they are generally in the 70's - 90's for average HRV. I have never been above 30 for as long as I've been recording, but 11!? My body was clearly very stressed.
The ring also showed me that my average respiration rate was 18.0, which is high, but I'm usually that high. And it told me that my body temp dropped half a degree Celsius last night, but my body temp is different every night. My temp is up and down and all over the place.
To compare, here's a couple more average nights when I wasn't feeling abnormally terrible:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H1-ljVIHp1_0d0Ay58z0qUjQkC8yI5LIcA/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KChhS7TcjuJ5GWrrGPXEU8rTp4xMiCgX4w/view?usp=sharing
Something to keep in mind with REM: it's not restful. It's called Rapid Eye Movement because the body is working to repair and reset during that time. The more you need, the more your body is trying to repair. That's how it was explained to me. So when I have these nights with high REM, even though I got 9 hours of sleep, it was not restful sleep. If I can at least get and hour of deep sleep I do okay, regardless of REM. So I'm exhausted. I couldn't bring myself out of bed until 11 am. I just wanted to lay there. But eventually I started to shiver and I realized I needed food really badly, so I forced myself up.
Beef Bacon is amazing, by the way. I'm sick of turkey bacon (had it too often), and I can't have pork. I actually hate pork, so I don't mind not being able to have it. But a local grass-fed (mostly) beef company makes beef bacon with just beef and sea salt. It's amazing. So incredibly delicious.
No comments:
Post a Comment