We write a lot about sleep here at HuffPost UK, partly because so many Brits don’t get enough of it.
We’ve covered the worst things to do if you wake up at 3am, as well as the best methods to help you nod off when your body doesn’t seem to want to.
But can focusing too much on the perfect night’s kip actually be keeping you up at night?
According to consultant neurologist and sleep physician Dr Guy Leschziner, “orthsomnia” ― a fixation on ideal, flawless slumber ― might well backfire.
Speaking to The Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast, the doctor explained that some people become “anxious and obsessed with their sleep as the result of using sleep trackers.”
Some devices, like smartwatches, tell you how much, how deeply, and how “well” you’ve sleet ― and for some people, that can become a fixation, Dr Leschziner shared.
He doesn’t track his own sleep, by the way.
Orthosombnia is therefore an “unhealthy obsession” with good sleep.
Though we all do need enough sleep for our bodies, and “there seems to be a sweet spot for the average person ― somewhere between seven and eight hours,” Dr Leschziner stressed “there’s huge variation” from person to person.
“To say that everybody needs eight hours ― that’s not correct.”
So sleep trackers that prescribe the same amount of sleep for everyone can be misinformed, he says, “and their accuracies vary as well.”
For people with insomnia, “the more you focus on sleep, the more difficult sleep becomes.”
“If you’re already concerned about your sleep, if you already have difficulty getting off sleep, and you sleep tracker is really telling you what you already know, which is that you’re not getting enough sleep for you, then it’s very difficult then to say ‘oh well I’ll just try and improve my sleep by going back to bed.’”
This can worsen sleep, he says, and might lead to orthosomnia ― where people develop issues with their sleep, possibly due to their sleep data.
Dr Leschziner said he’s seen people who have diagnosed themselves with sleep conditions on the back of their sleep data.
“Sometimes that can be correct but quite often it can be incorrect,” he says.
“The other big issue that I often see is that these sleep trackers will often give you a breakdown of how much deep sleep, how much REM sleep you’re getting. And that varies hugely between individuals,” he added.
People are concerned about, say, the percentage of their REM sleep “whereas actually that’s nothing to worry about,” the doctor said.
But that concern can make us “obsessed” with our sleep, which then (ironically) “deteriorates.”
Trackers can be helpful in some circumstances, the doctor added.
But if your stress about sleep is overtaking your actual slumber, you might want to leave the data be for now.
