I have been tracking my reaction time somewhat haphazardly but tracking my weight more frequently. I use a digital scale to log my weight without clothes and use my own reaction time app to gauge median reaction time (which is typically about 250msec for me). I use an old version of Keep track to log this data.
I hadn’t been thinking of it but today I was curious to see how my reaction time data compared with my body mass data. The data is somewhat noisy so I decided to aggregate it over monthly intervals. I got this interesting graph
I didn’t expect to see anything resembling a correlation so I was kind of surprised to see what looks like one.
Here is my visual reaction time app I made for Android. (Disclaimer: really not sure what the uncertainty is in my reaction time measurements… I think it can take up to 1/60th of a second to update the graphics screen but I tried to keep the code as tight as possible)
Seems like an unlikely (and therefore interesting) finding.
If you could export the data in a CSV format then it would be easier to analyse any correlation. Just looking at graphs of averages can be misleading — human brains are tuned to notice patterns, after all, even if they’re not really there.
Importantly, even if the two are correlated, they might not be causally related. It could just be a coincidence. It’s also possible that some third factor is causal in both of them. E.g. time of year or diet.
This is a very intriguing graph. Am I understanding correctly that each data point is a monthly average and you’ve been tracking these two measures daily for about a year? I second @gianlucatruda’s request for a .csv file. Definitely surprising and interesting.
I would usually take my reaction time test trials until the average and median didnt fluctuate too much… in retrospect I should have used a fixed number of trials but each reaction test date reflects at least 10 attempts.
I would always log my reaction time results a minute or two after testings. My weight was usually recorded in the morning with just underwear on a digital scale after going to the bathroom.
Yes I use a Fitbit Alta. I seem to average about 6 hours a night which has quite a bit a room for improvement. I haven’t had my Fitbit long enough to track it over the winter months yet though but yes I definitely agree that lack of sleep dramatically influences my appetite.
Also I don’t snore as often when my body weight is lower so that greatly improves my sleep quality which certainly impacts my reaction time. I didn’t sleep well last night and my median reaction time is now about 300 msec so I am going to avoid driving the rest of day until I can at least get a nap.