Professor and researcher Laura Bloomfield at the University of Vermont is the principal investigator of the Lived Experience Measured Using Rings Study (LEMURS). The longitudinal study started in 2022 and tracked hundreds of UV students using a wearable Oura ring biosensor 24-hours a day. The data revealed that changes in mental health status could be tracked.
When parsing baseline sleep data, the researchers found “consistent associations” between people’s perceived stress scores and factors such as total sleep time, resting heart rate and heart rate variability, and respiratory rate. While it’s no surprise that most participants received less than the recommended 8 to 10 hours of sleep for young adults, the minutes do matter. For every additional hour of sleep recorded, the odds of someone reporting moderate-to-high stress decreased about 38 percent. Nightly resting heart rates offered more clues. For each additional beat per minute, the odds of experiencing stress increased by 3.6 percent.
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