Mount Sinai researchers using wearables to explore the link between IBD and sleep disruption

Think of sleep as the body's overnight tune-up. Now picture tiny wrist-worn trackers acting like pit-crew chiefs, flagging trouble before the engine even sputters. Mount Sinai scientists have just shown that these everyday wearables can spot brewing inflammation in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) simply by watching how our dreams change.

"This is the first study to longitudinally map objective sleep patterns before, during, and after IBD flares using wearable technologies," notes Dr. Robert Hirten, the study's senior investigator.

His team's discovery, published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, ties poor sleep not to nagging symptoms but to the silent storm of gut inflammation itself.

How does it work?

• The gadgets: More than 100 volunteers strapped on Apple Watches, Fitbits, or Oura Rings for roughly seven months.
• The data stream: Each night the devices logged sleep stages — light, deep, and that all-important REM dreamland — plus total shut-eye and how much time was spent actually asleep in bed.
• The cross-check: Participants filled out daily symptom diaries while labs measured blood and stool markers of inflammation.
• The reveal: REM time plummeted and light sleep crept up only when inflammatory markers spiked. Symptoms alone — abdominal pain, diarrhea, bleeding — didn't budge the sleep graphs.

Why does it matter?

Wearables turned into crystal balls:

• Early warning: Sleep quality worsened weeks before a flare, then rebounded once the gut calmed.
• No needles, no fuss: Continuous, passive monitoring beats repeated blood draws or, yes, dreaded stool cups.
• Precision medicine in action: "Our findings are crucial because they suggest that poor sleep may be related to active inflammatory disease, even when patients are not reporting symptoms," Dr. Hirten says. "This approach opens new possibilities for how wearable devices can monitor health events and track sleep in chronic diseases."
• Bigger picture: If sleep can foretell gut trouble, similar digital breadcrumbs could flag flare-ups in other chronic illnesses — from arthritis to asthma.

The context

IBD — a catch-all for Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis — afflicts millions with unpredictable bouts of abdominal pain and bleeding. Doctors have long suspected that lousy sleep both reflects and fuels these flares, yet past studies leaned on short snapshots or fuzzy self-reports. By following patients night after night, this Mount Sinai project slices through that fog.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health (K23DK129835), it underscores a growing truth: consumer tech isn't just for counting steps anymore; it's quietly rewriting the playbook for real-time, at-home health surveillance — one restless night at a time.