Tell me how you sleep and I’ll tell you how stressed you are

The fact that a high level of stress is the enemy of quality sleep, as well as the fact that, conversely, sleeping little and poorly makes you more stressed, is not at all surprising, and has been known to the scientific community for some time. Perhaps less known aspects of the issue, however, are those that concern a quantitative estimate of the correlation and the direction of a possible cause-effect relationship. And this is precisely what a team of scientists from the University of Vermont, who analyzed the data collected from a commercial wearable device (a ring, to be precise, that you wear while you sleep and stores various vital parameters) to try to identify stress biomarkers: the authors of the study hope to be able to use them as stress warning light. The study was published in the journal PLOS Digital Health.

Hours of sleep and heart rate

Stress is an element that has a crucial influence on physical and mental health, and it is from this consideration that the scientists’ idea started: “The signals of stress are so strong – he said Laura Bloomfield, professor of mathematics and statistics and first author of the study – which we suspect must be recognizable among the data collected during sleep. Changes in stress values ​​are always visible.” Indeed, by analyzing the data collected by the ring, the scientists found “consistent associations” between each person’s assessment of their own stress level and factors such as total sleep duration, resting heart rate, heart rate variability heart rate and respiratory rate. Some numbers: Most participants slept less than eight hours – the recommended “minimum” for well-being – and, most interestingly, with each additional hour of sleep recorded, the likelihood of a self-report of high stress was found to be higher. be 38% lower, a consideration which seems to quantitatively justify the presence of a correlation between stress and hours of sleep. Heart rate also appears to play a role: for every additional beat every minute, the likelihood of experiencing high levels of stress increases by 3.6%.

All in one ring

The experiment just conducted is part of a larger study, called Lemurs (Lived Experience Measured Using Rings Study), a research launched in 2022 for which approximately six hundred university students wore an electronic ring 24 hours a day and answered periodic questionnaires on their well-being. The one just published is the first peer-reviewed scientific article composed thanks to Lemurs data, and demonstrates the actual effectiveness of wearable devices for assessing the mental health of those who use them.

A pill to swallow to check your vital signs

by Sandro Iannaccone

25 March 2024

From data collection to intervention

“The study showed that the data collected by Oura (this is the commercial name of the device) predicts well the level of stress perceived by the study participants – explains Bloomfield – If we were able to identify in real time a subject who is experiencing an increase in stress by analyzing your sleep data, we may have the opportunity to intervene in a more useful and timely way. There are many ways to implement these interventions, but the first step is undoubtedly to understand the connection between data collected during sleep and parameters that evaluate mental health.”