New Apple Watch: Now I know my nighttime vitals

In addition to detecting sleep apnea, the new watchOS 11 operating system also brings Apple’s Vitals or vital signs app to the watches. Sleep apnea detection is also coming to the Series 9, and the vital signs app is also coming to older watches. When worn at night, the app displays heart rate, breathing rate, wrist temperature, blood oxygen and sleep duration and shows whether the values ​​are in a normal range or a potentially problematic range.

Since I received the two test devices a few weeks ago, I have been wearing one of them every night so that all sleep data is recorded. I’ve never worn a watch while sleeping, with the Ultra 2 it’s extra irritating, after all it weighs almost 62 grams. From the other side of the bed I hear complaints that the metal box is far too cold. On the other hand, the titanium Apple Watch is comfortable to wear in bed, at least with a fabric strap. It’s almost 10 grams lighter than last year’s model, and that’s clearly noticeable. Nevertheless, it is not as pleasantly unobtrusive as Samsung’s Galaxy Ring.

After a few days I look at the Health app on the iPhone, which is, as we all know, a similarly clear place as Diagon Alley or the ARD media library. Good luck finding your way back. Once I look at the sleep section, I see a nice presentation of my sleep phases calculated by the watch, the above-mentioned “night vital values” (what a word!) and the breathing disorders, i.e. the sleep apnea value.

Not ideal for the drama of this text, but all the better for me: according to the clock, everything is fine. I usually sleep enough, my heart beats the way a heart should beat, my wrist is at a good temperature and my breathing is virtually noise-cancelled. Maybe I should become a performance sleeper.

But: is my watch right?

That’s what a sleep researcher says

I arrange to have a phone call with Christoph Schöbel, he is a professor of sleep and telemedicine and heads the sleep medicine center at the Ruhrland Clinic at the University Medical Center Essen. He has already treated numerous patients with sleep apnea – and has set up a smartwatch consultation. People come to him whose smartwatch gives worrying values. Also to sleep apnea.

Schöbel explains to me that sleep apnea occurs when the upper respiratory tract relaxes. This causes them to become tighter, and that results in sounds – snoring. If the space is very narrow and little or no air enters the lungs, breathing stops and the oxygen content in the blood decreases. To prevent suffocation at night, the respiratory center sets a short wake-up stimulus, you wake up briefly, the airways open with a loud snoring, and the lungs are properly ventilated again. However, the waking phase is often very short; you often fall asleep straight back and therefore cannot remember it. Therefore, says Schöbel, many patients feel exhausted in the morning, fall asleep during the day and cannot concentrate without even knowing why. If the pauses in breathing are not treated in the long term, the risk of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke and also dementia could be increased, he says.

Risk factors that people themselves could influence include drinking alcohol in the evening and being overweight. But many people simply have a predisposition to the disease, says the doctor. In addition, the respiratory system becomes more likely to relax with age. In the past, it was often said that three to six percent of the adult population were affected by sleep apnea. However, Schöbel assumes that the numbers are much larger; he considers the “estimated more than a billion people worldwide” that Apple is talking about to be realistic.

Is there a suspicion that sleep doctors monitor their patients in the sleep laboratory, usually for one night. There, numerous cables and sensors measure brain waves, muscle tension, heart activity and much more. At home, a small watch on your wrist has to suffice – can that even work? I expected Schöbel to laugh at me for the question. But his answer, surprisingly, was: Yes, it can work.