UPDATE 5 Jan 2020: Correlation doesn't always equal causation. I have just realized that I started taking 30 mg (1/2 grain) of Thyroid medication the month after I got my teeth surgery. It is quite likely that it is the Thyroid, not the surgery, which had such an effect on my HRV and sleep quality. I'm going to test this theory by doubling my medication in the month of January to see if that bumps my HRV even more, and then go off the Thyroid completely in February to see the opposite effect. Of course, the oral surgery was still a good thing, to get cavities, metal, and other infections out of my mouth, and perhaps both changes combined to help my Oura scores get better.
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12/21/2019: I got my Oura Ring in November 2018. For those of you who don't know, it's a wearable device the size of a normal ring, which tracks sleep trends, temperature, respiratory rate, heart rate, movement, heart rate variability, etc. For a few hundred dollars of investment it gives an amazing amount of data. It's also the first time I've really ever worn a ring. Really. I'm lucky I haven't lost it a thousand times.
In late May 2019 I had oral surgery, a couple of cavities fixed, maybe that's no big deal. But more of a big deal, according to my dentist, were the cavitations of my four wisdom teeth, black holes in my mouth harboring lots of infection and inflammation. I had had them removed in the Army 15 years earlier, for no good reason aside from someone said that I should, to "avoid" problems later. Turns out removing them for no good reason would "cause" problems later. And cost my pocketbook as well. My dentist opened up the old holes, cleaned out the infections, added ozone to help them stay healthy, and stitched them back up. I had no idea if it would help me or not, but figured the ring might give me some informative trends sooner or later.
Indeed it did. Honestly, without this data, I might not have though the surgery was worthwhile at all. But with it, I can tell that it has had an effect on my overall health and longevity. The graphs below are monthly averages of the data, because daily readings vary wildly as I train, race, recover and go through daily life. It wasn't until recently when I looked at monthly averages that I even noticed this trend was happening.
First, Heart Rate Variability is steadily going up since my surgery. Heart Rate Variability is a measure of the space between heartbeats. More variability is good, it shows your heart is actively making micro adjustments as needed. So there's an upward creep after May. It stopped in October as I worked long days sitting in a tractor and ate lots of fast food. In December I used an infrared sauna a couple of times, which might have bumped HRV higher than it would have gone otherwise.
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| Average Heart Rate Variability |
Next, my deep sleep is slowly creeping up. Deep sleep is really important, and usually drops as you get older. Note: Oura has sometimes changed their algorithms on sleep data, so that could have had an effect on these numbers as well, but I don't really know without comparing someone else's data to mine over the same time.
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| Deep Sleep |
Even as my deep sleep was improving, my total sleep time was going down. This might not seem like a good thing, but as I don't set an alarm clock, I wake up when I am done sleeping. So the amount of sleep I need each night to feel well rested is going down. The anomaly here is July, when I took too many B Vitamins for a short time and it affected my ability to sleep. Oops.
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| Total Sleep |
Finally, sleep latency is generally decreasing. That's the time it takes me to fall asleep.
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| Sleep Latency |
Obviously these results are just an N=1, but for me, they show me that getting some infection out of my mouth has been worth it. I still have a couple of root canals which are next up to deal with.
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