You can now do a sleep apnoea test using your watch. Is it worth it?
You also might understand why up to 90 per cent of the 1 billion-odd people believed to have sleep apnoea go undiagnosed.
Apart from potential cost and access issues, fatigue is so common we've normalised it – we live in the era of 'The Great Exhaustion', according to author and computer science professor Cal Newport. Besides, who wants another disturbed night's sleep for a test when they already feel dog-tired?
Enter the growing number of wearables offering a minimally disruptive sleep apnoea test in the comfort of your own bed.
But how does a device on your wrist detect obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), in which throat muscles intermittently collapse and block the airway during sleep, causing a person's breathing to stop and start? How accurate are they? And, if they don't replace a formal diagnosis, what's the point?
Last week, Apple announced the Australian release of its sleep apnoea feature, available on Apple Watch Series 9 and above and Apple Watch Ultra 2. In August, Samsung's sleep apnoea feature on the Galaxy Watch will become available in Australia.
While other devices, such as Whoop, Oura, Garmin and FitBit, have sleep health features that can alert the wearer to disrupted sleep patterns, they do not have specific Therapeutic Goods Administration-approved features to detect breathing disturbances and therefore sleep apnoea.
So how does it work?
Dr Matt Bianchi, formerly an assistant professor in neurology at Harvard Medical School, is now a research scientist at Apple.
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