Your sleep tracker could be making your insomnia worse
Clinically reviewed by Dr. Chris Mosunic, PhD, RD, CDCES, MBA
Sleep trackers offer valuable sleep data but obsessing about the numbers can negatively impact sleep. Learn whether orthosomnia is affecting your sleep and what to do.
Research has shown that a good night’s sleep is crucial for our mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing. So, just like we exercise and focus on healthy eating to support our health, putting in effort towards getting good sleep is another valuable investment. In recent years, this investment has shown up in the rise of wearable trackers.
About 30% of Americans are using wearable trackers to gather health-related data, including about their sleep. The data gathered can include the quality, duration and even cycles of your sleep. Meant to be a reflection tool, these numbers can show you common patterns in your daily sleep habits. Which is great.
Until it isn’t.
Sleep tracking gone too far
We live in a self-improvement obsessed culture, always looking for ways to “hack” our health/time/productivity and measure our success. So it’s no surprise that the data from these wearable trackers can become fuel for obsession. Beyond noticing simple patterns, many of us end up fixating on our sleep scores in the pursuit of the “perfect” night's rest. So many of us, it turns out, that it’s this trend has its own name: orthosomnia
“Orthosomnia, or the drive for perfect sleep, is the fixation on the data from our sleep trackers to the point that it causes anxiety and disrupted sleep that can interfere with your daily life. ”
Instead of winding down for the night, we worry if we’ll get the right kind of sleep to get a better score tomorrow. Or we spend the day obsessing over our low numbers from the previous night, sure we won’t be able to get through our long to-do list. Maybe we self-diagnose sleep disorders after a few nights of bad sleep, sure our health is suffering. Some even stay in bed longer in hope of improving the data.
Good enough sleep
Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with tracking your sleep, but focusing more on the numbers rather than your own understanding of how your body responds to sleep is a recipe for obsession and anxiety. Plus, there is no such thing as perfect sleep. The truth is that everyone has different sleep needs, which will vary on different days and times, even for healthy sleepers!
When we start to fixate on getting the “perfect” night’s rest, we can get in the way of “good enough” sleep, or any sleep at all. Because you can’t force or control your sleep, you can only set up better conditions to allow it to unfold.
4 ways to let go of orthosomnia
If you find yourself obsessing over your sleep numbers, try these tips to help you let go:
1. Remember the context
There are a few important things to keep in mind when it comes to wearable sleep trackers: these devices aren’t FDA regulated, have little to no research comparing them to clinical sleep research or measurement, and don’t always share their methods for sleep tracking.
Which means that researchers and sleep doctors don’t always know, and can’t always validate, the ways your sleep is being measured. What doctors do know is that these devices are not measuring what your brain is actually doing while sleeping, as in professional sleep studies, so the data you get is more of an estimation, or educated guess, than a fact.
One study showed that trackers only accurately identified deep sleep 59% of the time. This doesn’t mean the trackers have no use, but it does mean you can take your scores and data points with a grain of salt!
2. Take a break from tracking
You don’t need to give it up forever, but if you’re feeling a little too tied to your sleep scores, explore taking a break from the tracker to see if you can ease up on your fixation.
You could try an old school sleep journal for a time, where you self-track important sleep information like:
Bedtime/Wake-up time
How long it takes to fall asleep
Sleep interruptions
Perceived sleep quality
How daily habits (diet, exercise, medications) affect your sleep
Learning to track and reflect based on what you observe and how your body feels rather than what a tracker is telling you can be a more holistic way to see any patterns that are affecting your sleep.
3. Focus on sleep hygiene
Rather than trying to control the numbers, focus on investing in the habits and practices that will set you up for a good night’s sleep.
Relaxation, a regular sleep schedule, winding down before bed, setting up a comfortable room, and avoiding electronics are all ways to tend to your sleep hygiene and create a foundation for better overall sleep.
💙 Try adding a calming playlist, meditation, or Sleep Story into your wind down routine.
4. Get professional help
If your anxiety about your sleep (or lack thereof) is getting hard to manage day-to-day, seek out a therapist to help you re-relate to your sleep.
Instead of spiraling about your sleep numbers, use them to start a convo with a doctor or sleep specialist to help you make a plan for improving your sleep.
Calm your mind. Change your life.
Mental health is hard. Getting support doesn't have to be. The Calm app puts feel-better tools in your back pocket, with personalized content to manage stress and anxiety, get better sleep, and feel more present in your life.
Images: Getty
