What can you decipher from your data? If you can identify causality links and derive actionable insights from the charts of your Health Mate Web dashboard, you will be able to make informed choices. For example you can discover interactions between activity and sleep. Gather your data, aggregate it on your Withings account, look at the resulting weekly table and try to see how you can improve your health, like Martin Bragg did… Here is his testimonial.
A “natural data hunter”, part 2
After having been looking at all those colorful little squares that put together the Health Mate Week chart for nearly two months, I’ve found some interesting results, going from amusing to quite shocking.
“A new world of knowledge of my own organism has been opened thanks to the Withings Pulse!”
1. The road to deep sleep
I’ve seen how every night I smoothly fell in a deep sleep state that reaches its summit at 90 minutes after going to bed. This pattern seems to repeat night after night, and it’s not affected by time to go to bed or exercise. That’s quite interesting.
2. To dream of REM
I’ve confirmed that sleeping goes in wave patterns of light to deep to light to deep… phases, which amazingly correspond very well with my REM/no_REM states (I matched it with the daily sleep graph in the Health Mate Dashboard, and also looking at whether I was or wasn’t dreaming when I woke (or was waken) up during the night).
3. Don’t take deep sleep lightly!
I’ve confirmed that the day I get up refreshed and without any drowsiness, the last blue square in the chart is light, so the alarm clock rang when I was in a light sleep phase. On the contrary, days that I was startled by the alarm clock and needed some a few seconds to locate myself I would later see that the dark blue square at the end of the sleeping time in the chart showed I was waken up while in a deep sleep phase. Bad enough.
4. Recharging batteries on week-ends
The chart makes clear how I get long catch ups in the weekends for my somewhat short sleeping times during the work days.
5. The calm after the storm
One surprising fact I’ve discovered, which I was not aware of at all, is that when I have an active early morning (that is, about two hours of active minutes, which can be some jogging or more frequently long brisk walks), then I tend to 
be more inactive, really still, about one to two hours later; this is showed as light gray squares in the chart.
I never noticed that my organism tend to laziness for some resting after moderately intense activity. I mean I don’t voluntarily try to get rest nor I feel I’m tired and decide not to get up from my desk. Thanks to the Health Mate weekly chart I’ve realized that during the days I haven’t done any activity I wander a lot more, unconsciously, than the days I’ve done it. I hardly have any still periods if at all. This was quite a revelation, because it brought to light a hidden behavior I didn’t know about myself.
6. A rested heart
I realized that my resting heart rate reads at least 15% less the days I sleep for long hours. I could easily test this by using the Pulse to measure my heart rate and later going to 
the Dashboard (Web based or on my smartphone) to see how many hours of sleep I had had that night. All in one! And one can do this just everyday, because it’s so easy and fast to see how many beats per minute your heart pumps just by putting your finger on the back of your Withings Pulse.
One step beyond in data mining
That said, I’m trying to get more insights from this fascinating chart, but I’m waiting for more time and more data to be collected. Those would be, for example, whether or not on long sleeping nights my sleep has less intensity in deep sleep. The data I’ve tracked for these 4 weeks seem to point in that direction, but I can’t say for sure. I need to record more week-ends.
Deep and light sleep cycle analysis
Also, I want to explore why on week-ends (and during the longest nights) there appears to be more of the lightest blue squares in the chart. Does it mean that the nights following days I don’t exercise I sleep lighter? Or rather that the shorter the night the most intense the sleep? A new world of knowledge of my own organism has been opened thanks to Withings Pulse!
As I told before, I’m a “natural data hunter”, but I’m aware that data is nothing. The usefulness is in information, and the Health Mate weekly chart complements perfectly the dashboard, putting all those Withings algorithms to work, magically turning data into information that can be easily used to make one’s life healthier.
A message to all Withingers: we’re always looking for testimonials. If you’ve found it beneficial to use one or several of our devices and apps, please take the time to share your experience! (community@withings.com) It could very well influence others and help them “turn on their well-being”. Now back to William!
