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- What You Need To Know About Your Fitbit Sleep Score
- What Can I Learn From My Fitbit Sleep Score?
- How Can Fitbit Help To Improve My Sleep Quality?
- Can I Use A Fitbit To Track A Child's Sleeping Pattern?
- How Can You Improve Your Fitbit Sleep Score?
- What Do I Do When My Fitbit Sleep Score Is Not Displaying?
- In Conclusion
What can Fitbit teach you about your sleeping habits and sleeping patterns? There are ways in which you can put your Fitbit sleep score to good use.
Many of us are struggling with sleep. Insomnia is a condition that is on the increase. By exploring and trying to understand our current sleeping habits, we may find ways of solving the problem we are experiencing.
On this page of our site, we will take a look at the Fitbit sleep score and how it can help you.
What You Need To Know About Your Fitbit Sleep Score
Although your Fitbit can’t help you solve your sleeping problems, it can certainly help point you in the right direction.
If you are the proud owner of a Fitbit, we will give you some ideas on how understanding your Fitbit sleep score can help you.
How Does Fitbit Versa Calculate Your Sleep Score?
If you have one of the following Fitbits, you can access a helpful feature called a Sleep Score.
- Fitbit Versa series
- Fitbit Ionic
- Inspire series
- Fitbit Charge 4 and 5
- Fitbit Sense
- Fitbit Luxe
To understand more about your sleep score on any of these devices, you first need to understand how Fitbit versa calculates your sleep score.
As we sleep, our bodies go through different stages. Fitbit estimates our sleep stages and calculates a sleep score ranging from 0 to 100.
By now, you are probably wondering what these numbers mean. Fitbit versa estimates how you slept. It does this by taking certain factors into account. It will estimate the length of each different type of sleep.
Our sleep cycle is divided into three different categories if you like. They consist of REM, light, and deep sleep. Fitbit will also look at the periods of you were awake during the night. For instance, we may wake up very briefly when we turn over in bed.
Your sleep score is shown on your Fitbit in the following ways:
- A 90 to 100 score is considered excellent
- 80 to 89 is considered to be good
- 60 to 79 is fair
- Lower than 60 is considered poor
Can I Get My Sleep Score Without Wearing My Fitbit?
No, you must wear your Fitbit when you sleep. It is a common misunderstanding that your Fitbit will stick to collecting sleep information when you leave it on your bedside table.
It does not. You will need to wear your Fitbit to find out your sleep score.
If you don’t usually wear a watch to bed, it could take a little while to get used to wearing your Fitbit when sleeping.
How Do I See My Fitbit Score?
Before you go ahead and try to interpret your Fitbit sleep score, you must understand the different stages of sleep. Follow this link to learn more about the science of sleep.
The best way to view your Fitbit sleep score is to view it in the app. It will display as a graph.
On top of the graph, the time Fitbit estimates that you spent in each sleep stage will be shown. It will have one score for each sleep stage. The sleep stages are shown as awake, REM, Light and Deep.
What Can I Learn From My Fitbit Sleep Score?
As Fitbit monitors your oxygen saturation level in the blood, it can indicate that you may have a sleep problem.
When you are concerned about sleeping patterns, you should write down your nightly sleep score. Although Fitbit is not a diagnostic tool, you can give the data it provides you with to a doctor when you suspect you have a problem.
The data will not mean much unless you track it for over a month. Write down how you felt in the morning and what you were doing before going to bed at night. Using electronic devices before bedtime can severely impact your sleeping patterns.
Can Fitbit diagnose sleep apnoea? Unfortunately, the answer to that is no. If you think that you suffer from the medical condition sleep apnea, you need to see a medical specialist. But, by all means, you should take your Fitbit sleep score with you to the clinic.
How Can Fitbit Help To Improve My Sleep Quality?
As I have a passion for good sleep, we will discuss this at length.
I have first-hand experience of how electronic and blue light devices can affect your sleep negatively. We used a Fitbit to understand what was going on with my husband’s sleep patterns.
My husband, a long-haul pilot, has started to have periods of poor sleep in recent years. During these periods, he has found it challenging to sleep and stay asleep.
Naturally, we blamed his work. It turned out that it was part of the answer, but it was not the whole answer. So don’t be surprised if you recognize some of the problems that I will tell you about on this page.
If you have ever seen a modern flight deck, you will know it is packed with electronic gear and instrumentation, omitting blue light. Before electronic paneling became part of modern aircraft, pilots reported fewer sleep problems.
Blue light interferes with your brain chemistry and can harm it. Therefore, long-term exposure is dangerous and can lead to various health disorders, including insomnia.
My husband spends a long time looking at all of these panels. Then, when he lands, he jumps into his car and drives home. The drive home takes about one hour.
Needless to say, his car also has electronic instrument panels omitting blue light. So when he arrives home, his poor brain is all over the place. It does not know how to sleep correctly.
We tracked his sleep on Fitbit and found out that there was a connection between his poor sleep and late-night returns from flying. When he went to bed, he never achieved deep sleep. His Fitbit indicated that he only went through two sleep stages – light sleep and REM sleep.
The same thing happens when you spend all day in front of a computer and use electronic devices with screens that emit blue light when you come home.
It has a name now, and it is called Blue Light Syndrome.
In other words, Fitbit can improve your sleep quality by identifying changes in your sleep pattern.
Can I Use A Fitbit To Track A Child’s Sleeping Pattern?
If you suspect that your teen or young child is experiencing a sleep problem, there is no reason why you can’t use a Fitbit to track the problem.
When you look at their sleep pattern in the app in the morning, what you should look out for more than anything is the periods they spent awake. But, first, you have to ask yourself what is going on.
Is your teen staying awake and spending time on mobile devices? If so, ask them to leave them in another room and not use them at least one hour before bedtime.
When a younger child has extended periods of staying awake, it could indicate that they are sleepwalking or can’t transition into a deep sleep because of sleep paralysis. Using a Fitbit is a great way to determine if your child is sleepwalking.
Does Fitbit sleep score know that you are having a nightmare? No, your Fitbit sleep score will not indicate that you are having nightmares at night.
How Can You Improve Your Fitbit Sleep Score?
There are ways in which you can help to improve your Fitbit sleep score.
Most owners of Fitbit like to exercise. According to the National Sleep Foundation, exercise can help us to improve the way we sleep. However, that does not mean that you should get a Peloton bike and put it in your bedroom.
But, going for a walk about two hours before you go to bed will help you sleep better. Walking and sleeping well go hand in hand. Although it is a dynamic exercise, it also helps you to relax.
My husband walked after long hauls flights and soon started to sleep better. He has said that walking became his meditation. It is undoubtedly one of the forms of exercise that you should try when your Fitbit indicates that you are not going into a deep sleep.
What Do I Do When My Fitbit Sleep Score Is Not Displaying?
The first thing you should do is restart your phone and see what happens. When you restart the phone, the Fitbit app should restart as well.
If you can’t see the information on your Fitbit, you need to reboot or restart the device. Should you still have a problem, find out if something is wrong with the settings. Your sleep score will display most of the time once you have restarted your Fitbit.
In Conclusion
Understanding your Fitbit sleep score can help you to sleep better. First, however, you must appreciate that your Fitbit is not a diagnostic tool.
The information that you get from your Fitbit sleep score is an indicator. When you are concerned about your sleep and can’t find the answer yourself, you should visit a medical professional and ask for help. By all means, take the information with you that you have gained from your Fitbit as it may help.
