St. Louis Park Chiropractor Best Practices
Research Commentary.
Sleep Better and Avoid Back Pain
A review of:
Kheirinejad, Saba & Visuri, Aku & Ferreira, Denzil & Hosio, Simo. (2022). “Leave your smartphone out of bed”: quantitative analysis of smartphone use effect on sleep quality. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. 1-20. 10.1007/s00779-022-01694-w.
Research Reviewed by Dr. John Wertish
Our findings indicate that using smartphones in bed leads to decreased sleep quality. Therefore, as a health guideline, try to refrain from using technology or entertainment sources once you go to bed and during your bedtime so you can sleep better and avoid back pain. Instead, let your brain process the information from such sources before bedtime. This part of the evening should function as a pre- winding down period. As our dataset had access to more fine-grained sleep metrics than commonly used (e.g., self-reported sleep/wake times or self-assessment surveys), we managed to uncover and quantify the effect of technology use on specific sleep quality metrics, e.g., sleep latency, heart rate, and sleep stages. Our results show that using smartphones in bed leads to increased sleep latency, higher average heart rate, and lower heart rate variability which are related to the quality of rest and are indicative of worse rest quality. Smartphone use can also lead to a higher proportion of awake periods during the night, reducing total sleep time.
Below I have referenced key quotes from this research to help summarize the results.
Quotes from the Article:
“Our results strongly highlighted the previous health guidelines of winding down before bed to improve sleep quality and show future directions for improving one’s sleep health and sleep hygiene.”
“Given our findings, our most important recommendation is to leave your smartphone out of your bed and also out of your bedroom. ”
Introduction to the Research:
Sleep is the primary time that your body recovers. It disposes of waste, repairs tissue, and cleans the brain. Even though phones have made our lives easier to work, connect, and be entertained. It can influence our health. At the beginning of the year 2021, the number of smart-phone users in the world is 3.8 billion, which shows that 48.53% of the world’s population owns a smartphone. Because of how easy they are to carry people bring their phones everywhere, even to bed.
Research Methodology
This work presents a 4-month-long experiment intended to measure how smartphones influence sleep quality. We collected the following metrics during the experiment to gain more insight into this relationship. Firstly, we use a wear-able sleep-tracking ring to collect sleep quality, quantity, and individual sleep metrics during the whole study period. Ninety participants responded to our invitations. Out of these 90, two participants dropped out mid-study; one participant had a skin condition that prevented wearing the wearable. One participant did not want to borrow an Android device for the study. Forty-eight (48) of the participants (53.3%) identified as female, 42 (46.6%) as male, the mean age of participants was 27 years (median of 24 years), with a standard deviation of 7.61 years, minimum age of 18, and maximum age of 61 years. The patients worse a sleep tracking ring. The wearable ring consists of an accelerometer, temperature sensor, and an HR sensor that can measure daily activity and performance, as well as detailed sleep-related metrics, e.g., amount of deep and REM sleep, sleep disturbances, and sleep latency and efficiency.
Research Findings
Investigating whether in our dataset we can observe the influence of smartphone use on the detailed sleep metrics. The wear-able ring offers more detailed sleep metrics than a generic sleep score. The details of the metrics are listed previously in Table-1 and include metrics like for example, sleep latency (the time it takes to fall asleep), time spent in different sleep phases (light, deep, REM), or disruptions to your sleep. We look at the correlation of using smartphones while in bed on each of the nine metrics using standard linear regression. Four out of the nine correlations are statistically significant (p < .05 for sleep latency, average heart rate, heart rate variability, and awake time), with the lowest heart rate being borderline (p = .063). The linear regression and corresponding p-values are presented in Fig.8.
Investigating the results from Fig.8 in more detail, we can observe that increased smartphone use causes a decline in seven out of nine variables. Two remaining variables are increased duration of REM sleep and decrease in restless periods during the night (both p > .05)
Make sure to get rest so your body recovers so stay out of pain. During the day we need to move, and it is important to keep each one of your joints in full range of motion. Keep your spine healthy by getting chiropractic adjustments, make healthy everyday lifestyle decisions and get your body moving to maximize your health.
Research References
As always with these reviews, these are my takeaways from the article and I encourage you to read the article in its entirety. The references used in this article by the authors of this article are listed here.
Our Message
If you’re looking for a Chiropractor near you that you can trust, choose one who will not only get rid of your back pain, neck pain, or headaches but who will also guide you to living a healthier lifestyle to keep you out of pain. Our St. Louis Park Chiropractors located in located in the West End near the corner of MN-100 S & Lake Rd., will teach you what the research says about how and why we should eat a better diet, move more and have more positive thoughts. By improving these areas of our lives we can become healthier and stay out of pain!