Pail Tales

I dislike fussy people. I especially dislike having to admit that I am overly fussy about watchbands. Too weird. The leather band that came with the Withings Steel HR Sport watch has gotten pretty comfortable, now that I have worn it for weeks. I no longer have to put it on “too tight" for it to collect heart rate consistently and some of the stiffness has gone away. However, I thought it would be worth trying to find something more comfortable. I wanted something soft and washable, but not made of plastic/rubber/silicone that sticks to sweaty skin. I wanted one that was not too long. I purchased a 20 mm canvas watchband from Barton . I chose a black one with quick release mounting and a 20 mm "gunmetal gray” buckle. When I opened it, I was surprised to see that it was very wide and did not taper from mount to end. That meant the buckle was noticeably larger than the one on the Withings leather band. However, the canvas band was the same width as the With...

We took an evening hike on Desperado trail (Sweetwater Preserve at Tortolita Rd). The cacti are fruiting. Love the purple and green colors of AZ.        

The Oura ring was designed around the principle that the day begins with a sleep period. I have always thought of the day ending with crashing into bed and resting from the day’s labor. I am trying to shift my perspective to one of today’s sleep (midnight to morning) is preparation for today’s thinking and doing (morning to midnight). Both the Oura ring and the Withings watch report sleep as the beginning of today (e.g., the sleep period reported on 7/15/2019 is the sleep that began at 11:00 pm on 7/14/2019, basically midnight to morning of 7/15/19). Semantics, perhaps, but consciously thinking in new ways is a creative exercise. Years ago I read Frans Johansson’s discussion of the power of reversing assumptions (see his  book , The Medici Effect). I still use that practice today.   For the past four days I wore the Withings watch to bed. Unlike the Apple Watch, the Withings watch does not have to be charged everyday,...

The Oura Cloud website permits a user to download her/his raw data for analysis. I thought that the Oura app was recommending a bedtime that was too early and wanted to analyze the data myself. I downloaded my data to a spreadsheet and uploaded it to statistical analysis software (SPSS v25). I learned that the app was correct. On those nights when I went to bed during the recommended window, I had a better balance between REM sleep and deep sleep (chart) and higher sleep efficiency (not shown). It is possible to use the Oura Cloud trends feature to analyze relationships between variables over time without downloading data. For example, I was able to see the relationship between bedtime and getting deep sleep. In the chart below the purple area is the time I went to bed and the red line is the hours of deep sleep I got. When I went to bed late (April) I got less deep sleep. When I went to bed at the recommended time (June), I got more deep sleep. Using the ring’s data, I ha...

There was an update to the Oura ring firmware (1.19.1) and iPhone app (2.7.0 & 3966) last week. I noticed a real improvement today when I was looking at trend data. It is a big change to me, but it was not mentioned in the update description. Before this update, when I tapped on average HRV I would get a trend plot of average HRV; but when I tapped on max HRV, I would get the same trend plot of average HRV, not max HRV. Now I get max HRV. The trend plot of max HRV does not have a text description, but the one for average HRV is still there. The same problem has been corrected with average resting HR and minimum resting HR. Now I can get a trend plot of average resting HR, not just minimum resting HR. As I was searching the web to see whether anyone else had commented on this change, I noticed that the Android Oura app is way behind in features, really nothing like the iOS app. The ring data is far more u...

We love warm weather and live in the Sonoran Desert without much complaining about the dry heat. But every once in awhile it is good to get away. Lately the temps have been 105˚ and higher here, so we decided to take the RV up to the mountains. This photo was taken on the way to NM. It is one of our favorite stops on Interstate 10 in the Dragoon Mountains of Arizona.   We drove to Silver City, a small college town and artists’ community in the southwest part of New Mexico. It is on the Continental Divide Trail as it passes into the Gila National Forest. We stayed in the middle of the city at Silver City RV Park. Temperatures in the daytime were in the 80s and in the 60s at night. It was raining like crazy when we arrived, but we had blue skies the rest of the time.   During our two days, we walked all around the downtown area. The docent at the Visitors Center gave us some short history lessons and lots of tips on t...

I have been wearing a Withings watch for 3 weeks (the Steel HR Sport model). There are some great features and some not-so-great features. Great features : Battery : It takes a week for the watch to drop to 80% battery life when I use it all day and have the route mapping function on for 45 minutes a day. I don’t wear it at night. At 80%, it charges to 100% in less than 15 minutes. I simply put it on the charger while I am in the shower. Notifications : I don’t need to be connected 24/7 and can look at my phone when I want, so the notifications feature was not important to me when choosing the watch. When I set up the Health Mate app, I turned on the phone and text notification just to see how it worked. It works quite well. The vibration is subtle, but easy to detect and the display is easy to read. I found it helpful on occasion. Button : The button on the watch is responsive. Light pressure activates it and holding it down g...