Ever since fitness trackers started getting more popular a few years ago, so did sleep trackers. Either in smartphone apps or directly on smartbands, lots of people swear by them.
However, they may mess up your sleep more than they actually help.
Sleep trackers work in their most basic form in apps by measuring the lack of activity on your device. In more complex variations like with smartwatches, they track biometric data as well to give you an accurate idea of your sleep patterns, down to the minute. These sometimes also serve as reminders that you need to stop fiddling with your phone and get to bed already.
However, some sleep specialists warn that using these kinds of apps and devices too much can be inaccurate. Worse, they believe that it can actually make your insomnia worse.
In some cases, insomnia is a result of anxiety or stress. The thing is, they say sleep trackers can exacerbate this by making you worry that you're already past your self-imposed bedtime, and therefore not getting enough sleep. This could worsen sleep anxiety, ironically thereby making it harder to get to sleep. This obsession with achieving an optimised sleep cycle is called orthosomnia.
The term was coined by researchers by researchers at the Rush University Medical School and Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in a 2017 case study. At the time the authors on the paper said sleep trackers can be helpful to identify bad sleeping habits. However, they also noticed patients tended to rely too much on the devices' reports. This was to the point where they thought something was wrong with them if the report indicated irregularities, even if they felt their own sleep was fine.
That's why doctors say that, though it's though it's handy to use these apps, and they can point out bad habits on your part, eventually you have to keep in mind that sometimes they won't be accurate. At the end of the day, what your body tells you about the sleep your getting is more important than what a device does.
In the case of orthosomnia, researchers have found that people tend to spend more time in bed in order to peak their sleep numbers. Not only did this mean they were spending excessive amounts of time laid out, but that added anxiety was just worsening their inability to sleep, causing a vicious cycle.
The most important thing to do then, researchers say, is to just regularise your sleep cycle. Make sure you're in bed at a decent hour and with your phone tucked away to avoid distractions. Put it on a do not disturb mode, don't kid yourself by thinking you won't wake up to check a notification that vibrates the phone on silent mode. And try to get to bed at roughly the same time everyday. Your body then develops its own cycle of wakefulness accordingly
And when you get enough sleep, it has a positive effect on everything from your immunity, to your weight, to your emotional and mental state, and even resistance to heart disease.
And most of all, let go of the idea of perfect sleep. Avoid thinking that your day will be ruined because you're only getting six hours of sleep instead of 7-9. You'll do just fine.