I’ve been using my Oura ring for something like a month now, and I think it will actually prove to be a game changer.
It didn’t take me long to realize that when I wake up still feeling tired and then feel unmotivated all day, it’s because I didn’t get very much deep sleep.
And every time I wake up feeling great and have tons of energy, it’s because I got lots of deep sleep.
Now, it’s not an EKG and its determination of sleep cycles is not entirely accurate. But it’s not bad either. And it seems to track very well with how I’m feeling.
This is the kind of information I’ve historically lacked. It feels a little bit like the missing piece of the puzzle.
I’m still experimenting and I haven’t gotten anything settled yet. But at the moment, it’s really looking like any amount of caffeine throws off my deep sleep completely.
Even a single green tea in the morning or a root beer in the afternoon is enough to reduce my deep sleep to an hour and fifteen minutes (on a good night) to thirty minutes or less.
I drank a bit yesterday and lately have been thinking that alcohol totally ruins my deep sleep, but apparently that’s not true. I got plenty last night. And I haven’t had caffeine in like 5 days.
I’ll keep going caffeine free for at least a few more days, and then I’ll test my theory by having one green tea in the morning. If it messes up my deep sleep, I’ll know that’s what happened.
I’m not getting my hopes up because I’ve been so wrong about many of these things before. But this one so far seems very plausible.
I’m also continuing to improve my nose breathing and that could also be helping with my sleep. Hard to say.
I’ll report back if I have any more evidence to support or refute my theory.
Oh, and just so I have them written down: if it’s not caffeine, there’s also some evidence that eating less than 2 hours before bed could be a real problem, or that screen use is a problem.
Although I did both right before bed last night and it was fine.