The elusive Hammock

The folks at Oura suggest that one’s night-time heart rate pattern should resemble a hammock, with the nadir at 2 am (assuming you went to sleep around 11 pm).

 

 

 

 

 

Further, they suggest that a steady downward slope with a nadir shortly before you get up is not a healthy pattern. That was exactly what my night-time heart rate pattern looked like most nights (Figure 1).

 

Figure 1

 

I began to watch how day-time activities changed my sleep patterns (not eating late, eating late, lots of slow exercise, lots of fast exercise, no exercise, etc.). I found that hammock quite elusive. I have, however, seen some very positive shifts. In the last week, 6 out of 7 nights look like this night’s sleep (Figure 2).

 

Figure 2

 

My heart rate stabilized by 2 am and the nadir occurred by 3 am. Looks like I got 6 hours of relaxed, restful sleep.

 

I have also seen a change in the time I spend in sleep stages. For the first 2 weeks, I was spending less than 1 hour in deep sleep. I was spending 3 hours in REM sleep. Now I am spending about 1.5 hours in deep sleep and 1.5 hours in REM sleep. I spend a lot less time awake, only about 1 hour. I have some thoughts on what might account for the positive changes, but things are dynamic in my life now, so I suspect there is a lot more experimenting to be done.