Fitbit tracker is how I discovered I am in bad shape when it comes to sleep. My doctor was worried I had dementia due to my cognitive issues and hallucinations in the past few years, and he sent me for neuro-psychiatric testing and to see a neurologist for it. I kept mentioning that my sleep tracker is reporting a lack of quality sleep, especially REM sleep. I said yes I know it's not 100% reliable but it seems worth looking into because on days I get some REM, I feel great. Docs weren't really taking me seriously though.

Thanks to the tracker, I was able to determine that on nights I have just awful sleep, it correlated with my exercise days. Turns out that taking a pre-workout loaded with caffeine at 4PM is a terrible idea because caffeine can have a nearly 12 hour half-life. Oops. Ditched the pre-workout and my sleep improved significantly. No more insomnia and less time waking up in the middle of the night. I still have issues with REM at least half of the week unfortunately.

I finally got referred to a sleep study a few months ago and although it was for existing sleep apnea - which I've already been treating successfully with cpap/autopap for decades - it confirmed that I am indeed not going into REM. So it's not dementia (at least not yet), it's lack of REM sleep. It also revealed that my body is moving a lot during sleep, not good. And for the cherry on top, I recently started exhibiting behavior of REM sleep disorder where I am smacking/punching myself and my partner and yelling out in the middle of the night. Definitely not a good sign, but at least now we know sleep issues are at the heart of it. That Fitbit sleep tracking turned out to be very valuable after all.