These overlooked insomnia causes may be why you still can't sleep

From msn.com/en-us

Key takeaways

• Gut Health Matters: Low gut microbiome diversity is linked to poor sleep, later chronotypes, and social jet lag. Boost diversity with fibre-rich foods like legumes, oats, leafy greens, yogurt, kimchi, or kefir.
• Social Jet Lag: Large differences between weekday and weekend sleep schedules disrupt your body clock and gut health. Keep wake times within a 1-hour window and adjust gradually if needed.
• Body Temperature Tricks: Warming your body before bed (e.g., warm bath 90 min prior) helps trigger natural sleep cues. Keep your bedroom cool and consider a fan or cooling pad for deeper restorative sleep.

If you've already tried cutting caffeine, ditching your phone before bed and counting breaths until you pass out, and you're still lying awake at 2 a.m., the problem probably isn't your willpower.

Researchers are finding that some of the biggest overlooked causes of insomnia hide in places most sleep advice never goes: your gut bacteria, the gap between your weekday and weekend sleep schedules and even how warm your body gets before bed. Here's what the science says and what's actually worth trying tonight.

Why Your Gut Bacteria May Be Wrecking Your Sleep

The freshest insomnia research right now isn't about blue light or relaxation apps. It's about microbes. A February 2026 study in Nature Communications analysed 6,941 participants and found that lower gut microbiome diversity was directly linked to poorer sleep quality, a later chronotype and greater social jet lag.

Researchers identified 137 bacterial species tied to sleep, and more than a third of those associations held up in an independent cohort.

What to try: A fibre-rich diet is the most direct lever you have on gut diversity. Think legumes, oats, leafy greens and fermented foods like yogurt, kimchi or kefir. Food sources tend to be more effective than supplements and you don't need to overhaul your entire diet. Start with one meaningful addition per week.

What Social Jet Lag Is Doing to You Every Single Weekend

Think of social jet lag as the jet lag you give yourself on repeat. Stay up until 1 a.m. Saturday, sleep until 10, then try to be in bed by 10:30 Sunday for a 6 a.m. alarm? You've flown yourself several time zones without leaving your bedroom.

The same Nature Communications study found that this kind of weekly schedule shifting drives measurable changes in gut microbiome composition, compounding the sleep disruption. A September 2025 review in Medicina confirmed it also promotes systemic inflammation.

What to try: Keep your wake time within a consistent one-hour window across the whole week. The wake time anchor is what matters most to your body clock. If you've been sleeping in two or more hours on weekends, bring it back gradually by 20 to 30 minutes at a time.

The Hot Bath Trick That Sleep Researchers Are Actually Testing

A UCSF-led randomized trial (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT07036705, updated February 2026) is currently testing passive body heating via sauna blanket alongside CBT-I. The mechanism: warming your body before bed raises skin temperature, which then triggers your core temperature to drop, which is the physiological cue your brain reads as permission to sleep. A Scientific Reports study of 72 participants found that external body cooling during sleep significantly increased slow-wave N3 sleep, the deepest restorative stage.

What to try tonight: Take a warm bath or shower about 90 minutes before bed, not right before. You need the post-bath temperature drop to kick in before you get into bed. Keep your bedroom cool and if you sleep hot, a fan or cooling mattress pad can shift how deeply you sleep.

When Your Sleep Tracker Is Actually the Problem

Northwestern University researchers coined the term "orthosomnia" for insomnia triggered by fixating on tracker data. In their research, patients were losing sleep specifically because they were anxious about hitting perfect scores on devices like Oura and Whoop.

What to try: Give yourself a two-week tracker break and notice whether your sleep anxiety shifts. If you keep using it, check weekly trends rather than nightly scores. Night-to-night variation is normal and often meaningless. The pattern over weeks is what matters.

Why CBT-I Should Be Your First Call Before Medication

For chronic insomnia, cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia is the clinical first-line recommendation ahead of sleeping pills. It targets the thought patterns and behaviours that sustain sleeplessness. Roughly half of people who complete it still have some residual symptoms, per the UCSF trial documentation, which is why researchers are now testing body-based add-ons on top of it.

What to try: Look into a structured digital CBT-I program before assuming you need a prescription. Several telehealth platforms now offer clinically validated versions that are far more accessible than in-person therapy.

Insomnia is rarely just a discipline problem. It's biological, which means it's more fixable than most people assume. For anyone also exploring the breathing side of better sleep, what research says about the 4-7-8 method is worth a read alongside everything here.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/these-overlooked-insomnia-causes-may-be-why-you-still-can-t-sleep/ar-AA2496Fz?uxmode=ruby

The surprising reason a sleep tracker can wreck a good night’s sleep

From washingtonpost.com

You wake up to your 7 a.m. alarm feeling relatively refreshed and ready to tackle the day ahead. But when you check your smartwatch, you’re surprised to see a low sleep score staring back at you.

You start trying to remember the night before. Did you toss and turn more than you thought? Why is your watch telling you that you’re exhausted when you feel fine? When your head hits the pillow that night, you lie wide awake worrying about getting a good night’s sleep until the wee hours of the morning.

If this scenario feels familiar, you may have orthosomnia, a fixation on achieving “perfect” sleep, often fuelled by sleep trackers, that tends to result in worse sleep.

“Orthosomnia is, at its core, a form of insomnia triggered by obsessive tracking of sleep data and the use of sleep wearables,” said Andrew Spector, a sleep medicine specialist at Duke Health in North Carolina. “It’s essentially trouble falling asleep for artificial reasons.”

Many people rely on technology to fix their problems, but as it turns out, in this situation, these gadgets may backfire. Read on to learn more about orthosomnia and what to do if you think you might have it.

What causes orthosomnia?

At the root of orthosomnia is the popularity and ubiquity of sleep trackers. And while they can be useful tools at times — for example, some can screen for signs of sleep apnoea, such as breathing disturbances — they can interfere with your ability to listen to your body, according to Amy Morin, a Florida-based psychotherapist and author of “The Mental Strength Playbook.”

“Instead of thinking about how well rested you feel, you might look at an app or device to tell you if you’re getting enough sleep,” Morin said. Over time, this can undermine your trust in how you feel after a night of sleep and lead you to put too much weight on what a tracker says. “This can cause increased anxiety about sleep and can lead to more sleep problems,” she said.

For instance, you may start to depend on tech to tell you how you feel, as opposed to listening to your own body’s cues, according to Morin. People are impressionable, and if your wearable is telling you that you didn’t get enough sleep, you might start to convince yourself that you’re more tired than you actually are.

“You may start to feel sluggish. Then, you’ll act sluggish. Consequently, you’ll become sluggish,” Morin said. This may lead you to pass up an opportunity to do something later on in the day because you’ve allowed your tech to convince you that you’re too tired, she said.

Additionally, someone who wakes up feeling well rested but sees their sleep tracker telling them they woke up often during the night may spend all morning thinking about how they’re going to feel exhausted later, Morin said. They then may be so worried about getting adequate rest that, ironically, they can’t sleep when they try to wind down for the day, Morin explained.

Keep in mind that sleep trackers aren’t always accurate. These devices base their metrics on imperfect factors such as how much you moved during the night, Morin said. “That doesn’t always correlate to actual sleep time or sleep stages,” she said. “It’s important to know that these devices are just estimating how much sleep you got, and they’re not pinpointing your stages of sleep accurately.”

People with anxiety or perfectionism may be especially susceptible to orthosomnia, according to Morin. “They may want perfect sleep, and a tracking app may create stress that shows them not every night is going to be perfect,” Morin said.

How do you know if you have orthosomnia?

According to Spector, a tell-tale sign of orthosomnia is checking your sleep tracker immediately after you wake up and analysing all the data.

“Your sleep tracker will give you a summary of your night. If you look at the summary and move on with your day, that’s fine,” Spector said. “But are you going minute by minute through the night and analysing the little details of the report? That’s a red flag to me.”

Another indication of orthosomnia is not being able to get to sleep because you’re worried you won’t get a good sleep score that night, Spector said.

You may also start thinking about getting a good sleep score as your reason for wanting to sleep well as opposed to the actual benefits that come with adequate shut-eye — including improved mood, better focus and reduced risk of health conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and high blood pressure.

Tips to manage orthosomnia

There are a few ways to manage — and overcome — orthosomnia, according to experts:

Establish good sleep hygiene habits, like avoiding screen time before bed, creating a bedtime routine that helps you wind down and ensuring your room is dark and quiet, said Morin.

Focus on tuning into your body and recognizing when you need more rest and adjust your bedtime accordingly, according to Morin.

Recognize that your beliefs about sleep will greatly impact your performance, Morin said. If you assume a difficult night’s sleep will make it nearly impossible to function, you’ll have trouble functioning, she said. If, however, you believe you can still function just fine after a rough night, you’ll probably do much better.

Consider therapy if sleep becomes a source of anxiety that you can’t manage on your own, Spector said.

If you find yourself obsessing over your sleep data, try ditching your tracker for a month, Morin suggested. During that time, focus on good sleep hygiene and pay attention to how your body feels.

Once you can more confidently trust your body, you might decide to reintroduce wearable tech. Or, maybe you’ll realize you don’t really need it after all.

“Wearable tech is helpful if it gives you information you need to make the best health decisions. But it becomes a problem when it interferes with your ability to read your body’s cues,” Morin said. It’s unrealistic to expect perfect sleep every night, and accepting that might put your mind at ease just enough for you to drift off easily.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2026/06/26/your-sleep-tracker-might-be-giving-you-insomnia/

Meet the 3 Overlooked Insomnia Triggers That Most Sleep Guides Still Fail to Mention in 2026

From sacbee.com

Insomnia research has moved well beyond caffeine and screen time. The newest findings point to causes most sleep guides still ignore, from the bacteria in your gut to the temperature of your bedroom to the sleep score you’re checking every morning. Here’s what the research says is really keeping you up. 

What Are the Most Overlooked Causes of Insomnia? 

The three most underappreciated drivers of insomnia right now are gut microbiome disruption, social jet lag and poor body temperature regulation before and during sleep.

A February 2026 study in Nature Communications of 6,941 participants found that lower gut microbiome diversity was directly linked to poorer sleep quality, a later chronotype and greater social jet lag, connecting 137 bacterial species to specific sleep characteristics. 

Body temperature regulation is equally underappreciated. Core body temperature needs to drop to initiate sleep, and small disruptions to that process can stall onset or fragment deep sleep entirely. Understanding how pre-sleep breathing techniques connect to sleep onset adds useful context alongside these newer findings. 

Then there’s orthosomnia, coined by Northwestern University researchers to describe insomnia triggered by fixating on sleep tracker data. Patients were losing sleep because their wearable’s score was making them anxious. The tool meant to fix sleep was breaking it. 

How Does Gut Health Affect Insomnia? 

Gut health affects insomnia through a two-way communication loop between your microbiome and your brain. When that ecosystem is disrupted, sleep suffers.

The Nature Communications study found that participants with less diverse microbiomes consistently slept worse. A September 2025 review in Medicina explains why: the gut produces short-chain fatty acids that regulate inflammation and nervous system pathways tied to sleep. When that production drops, systemic inflammation rises and sleep quality falls with it. 

Poor sleep also degrades the microbiome, which then makes sleep worse. Breaking the cycle means addressing both ends. Varied plant intake, fermented foods like yogurt and kimchi and consistent eating patterns are the most accessible starting points. 

What Is Social Jet Lag and Can It Cause Insomnia? 

Social jet lag is the mismatch between your weekday and weekend sleep schedule, and it functions like flying across time zones every single week. Shift from a 6 a.m. weekday alarm to sleeping until 10 a.m. on weekends, and your circadian system never fully settles — which makes Sunday-night insomnia and Monday-morning fatigue almost inevitable.

The Nature Communications study tied social jet lag directly to gut microbiome disruption. The Medicina review found it suppresses short-chain fatty acid production and promotes systemic inflammation, both of which feed back into worse sleep. 

To measure yours, calculate the midpoint of your sleep on a typical workday versus a free day. A difference of an hour or more is measurable social jet lag. Keeping your wake time within about an hour across all seven days, including weekends, is the most effective fix available. 

Can a Hot Bath Actually Help You Sleep? 

Yes. Warming your body raises skin temperature, which triggers a compensatory drop in core body temperature. That drop is one of the strongest physiological cues your brain uses to initiate sleep. 

A UCSF-led randomized trial updated February 2026 is testing passive body heating via sauna blanket as an add-on to CBT-I, specifically because roughly half of people who complete CBT-I still experience residual symptoms. A Scientific Reports study of 72 participants found that external body cooling during sleep significantly increased slow-wave N3 sleep, the deepest restorative stage.

A warm bath about 90 minutes before bed is the most practical version of this. Keep your bedroom cool overnight to reinforce the effect. 

Can Your Sleep Tracker Be Making Insomnia Worse? 

It can. Northwestern University researchers coined “orthosomnia” to describe insomnia driven by anxiety over tracker data. Patients were losing sleep specifically because they were fixating on nightly scores from devices like Oura and Whoop, turning a wellness tool into a source of performance anxiety. 

The fix isn’t to throw the tracker away. It’s to check weekly trends rather than nightly scores, where normal variation becomes far less alarming. If your sleep score is the first thing you reach for every morning and it’s shaping your mood, a two-week tracker break is worth trying before anything else. 

Is CBT-I the Best Treatment for Chronic Insomnia? 

CBT-I is the first-line clinical recommendation for chronic insomnia ahead of sleeping pills, and its effects tend to last well after treatment ends. It works by retraining the thoughts and behaviours that sustain sleeplessness rather than chemically sedating the problem away.

That said, roughly half of CBT-I completers still have residual symptoms per the UCSF trial documentation, which is why researchers are testing body-based additions like passive heating alongside it. Digital and telehealth CBT-I programs have made access significantly easier in recent years and are a practical starting point before escalating to medication. 

This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.

https://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/living/article315892589.html

Know­ing if you’re a lark or a night owl will help you sleep bet­ter

From pressreader.com/ireland

If you’re not among the 1pc who can get by on five hours’ shuteye, here is how to get a bet­ter night’s rest

We all need sleep. It’s essen­tial for our health and well-being. But it turns out we are all dif­fer­ent when it comes to how much shuteye we need. Some get away with six hours a night, oth­ers need nine or 10. Sci­ence has recently turned atten­tion to those who need a lot less sleep than aver­age, mean­ing five hours or less. They are called short sleep­ers.

Most people who don’t get enough sleep, for example because of insom­nia or shift work, can suf­fer all kinds of ill effects. The day after a bad night’s sleep can be a struggle. Your immune sys­tem doesn’t work as well and so you might catch a bug. You may find your­self unable to think straight. Those with chronic insom­nia have a higher incid­ence of depres­sion and heart dis­ease. But sci­ent­ists have noticed that some people, about 1pc of us, get away with five hours or less sleep at night with no ill effects. How can this be?

One fam­ily, the Osmonds from Pennsylvania, have been stud­ied in detail. Joanne Osmond stays up late read­ing. Her sis­ters often spend hours in bed solv­ing cross­word puzzles. Her engin­eer father fixed tele­vi­sion sets late into the night and early in the morn­ing. Only her mother got a reg­u­lar night’s sleep.

Joanne said: “Grow­ing up, we didn’t real­ise that there was any­thing dif­fer­ent about us.”

Then in 2011, she dis­covered she had a vari­ant of a gene linked to short sleep that con­trols a brain chem­ical called glutam­ate. Her sis­ters were tested in 2019 and had the same vari­ant. Joanne is now 27 and only needs four hours’ sleep a night. She has cal­cu­lated that she has spent 13 years longer awake than the aver­age per­son given that she is awake three to five hours longer a day than most.

She feels she has made great use of all that extra time. She got a degree in engin­eer­ing, had five chil­dren, worked in jobs in tech­no­logy and, hav­ing stud­ied edu­ca­tion policy into the wee small hours of many nights, became pres­id­ent of the Illinois Asso­ci­ation of School Boards. “The world seems to need eight hours, and I don’t,” she said.

Ying-Hui Fu is a sci­ent­ist who has stud­ied about 100 short sleep­ers. Many of them have hob­bies they take ser­i­ously, and work in demand­ing jobs. They are also inclined to have a higher tol­er­ance for pain and don’t suf­fer so much from jet lag.

To under­stand how they get away with it, we need to know how sleep works and what it is for.

Most anim­als need sleep, but it’s dif­fi­cult to say exactly why. One reason is when we sleep we slosh out from our brains the waste products that build up dur­ing the day because of all the brain activ­ity going on. Another is that memor­ies get fully laid down.

There are big dif­fer­ences between spe­cies, however. Bats need 20 hours a day, while ele­phants need only two.

We humans are clearly obsessed with it. Books about sleep often top best­seller lists. Many of us wear sleep track­ers, giv­ing rise to a new psy­cho­lo­gical con­di­tion called “ortho­som­nia’’, defined as the obsess­ive pur­suit of optimal sleep met­rics. Guess what all this obses­sion with sleep can lead to? Insom­nia.

It’s import­ant not to drink too much alco­hol. Drink might help you sleep, but the sleep you get is ‘non-pro­duct­ive’

We all have a daily bio­lo­gical clock, called cir­ca­dian rhythm, that dic­tates when we fall asleep and wake up. As even­ing comes on, we make our own nat­ural sleep­ing pill called melatonin. And then we make something to wake us up, which is called cortisol.

Some people (who are called larks) get up early and oth­ers (who are called night owls) stay up late. Both still get an aver­age of eight hours a night, however.

In the 1990s, sci­ent­ists began study­ing people who only needed four or five hours’ sleep, but func­tioned nor­mally dur­ing the day. They real­ised this trait ran in fam­il­ies and figured that it was prob­ably genetic. And then in 2009 a par­tic­u­lar gene called DEC2 was dis­covered in short sleep­ers. It pro­duces a pro­tein called orexin, which was already known to pro­mote wake­ful­ness. One of the causes of nar­co­lepsy (a con­di­tion where people fall asleep spon­tan­eously at any time of day) is a defi­ciency in orexin. To make sure it was involved, mice were engin­eered to have the DEC2 vari­ant. Guess what? They slept a lot less than other mice.

Since 2009, six more genes have been found that are linked to wake­ful­ness. The Osmonds have a gene vari­ant that affects how a brain chem­ical called glutam­ate works.

How use­ful might this research be? Drugs to block orexin are in devel­op­ment, as a treat­ment for nar­co­lepsy, which can be very debil­it­at­ing. Tar­get­ing DEC2 could turn you into a short sleeper, should you want that. It could, however, be dan­ger­ous because not get­ting enough sleep increases the risk of devel­op­ing Alzheimer’s dis­ease.

To get a good night’s sleep you should prac­tise what’s called good sleep hygiene. This entails main­tain­ing a good rhythm: going to bed and get­ting up at roughly the same time every day. Our bod­ies love routine. Hav­ing a com­fort­able bed with low light­ing is import­ant to help you relax. It’s import­ant not to drink too much alco­hol, though. Drink might help you sleep, but the sleep you get is called “non-pro­duct­ive”. Eat­ing before bed­time can also dis­rupt sleep as your digest­ing juices flow and your tummy rumbles.

One way to find out how much sleep you need is to fol­low your sleep pat­tern when you’re on hol­i­day. Sleep when you’re tired and get up when you wake. Do this over a few days and you’ll fig­ure out the optimum num­ber of hours sleep you need.

One bene­fit from this research is it can bring com­fort. One short sleeper used to worry that there was something wrong with him. Once he found out his short sleep­ing was in his genes he calmed down. He has eight chil­dren. A lot of short sleep­ers seem to have lots of chil­dren. I sup­pose they have to fill those night time hours some­how. He runs a 200-mem­ber choir, volun­teers in his church and reads vora­ciously.

If you are blessed with short sleep, use your time effect­ively. The Osmonds weren’t crazy horses after all. As for the rest of us, fig­ure out if you’re a lark or an owl, and act accord­ingly.

https://www.pressreader.com/ireland/sunday-independent-ireland/20260503/281659671651245

 

Your Quest for Perfect Sleep Is Keeping You Awake

From time.com

In a culture that’s highly goal-oriented, yet another form of performance anxiety has emerged: It’s called orthosomnia, and it refers to an unhealthy preoccupation with getting the right amount of sleep as well as the right stages of sleep.

The term was coined in 2017 by researchers who were seeing a growing number of patients seeking treatment for self-diagnosed sleep disturbances based on data provided by their sleep trackers, explains Kelly Baron, a clinical psychologist who leads the behavioural sleep medicine program at the University of Utah and lead researcher on the paper that named the term. “Ortho” means straight or correct, and “somnia” means sleep. The researchers chose this term because of its similarity to a condition called orthorexia, an unhealthy preoccupation with healthy eating. 

Orthosomnia is not an actual medical diagnosis, but it is a phenomenon that has risen alongside the popularity of sleep trackers.

“In a clinical setting, we were seeing more and more people with insomnia coming in with sleep-tracking devices,” explains Baron. “They were believing the device more than their doctor” or even their subjective sense of how they had slept.

After reviewing a series of case studies, she and the other researchers on the paper concluded that some of the people who were unnecessarily concerned about their sleep quality were too caught up in their sleep-tracker data and were on a “perfectionistic quest for the ideal sleep in order to optimize daytime function.”

But many people don’t realize that “trackers are not medical devices—the accuracy is always suspect,” says Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist and founder of SleepDoctor.com. “Sleep is measured by brain waves, so unless you have electrodes attached to your head, you’re not going to have your brain waves measured.” That’s what’s done with polysomnography, a lab-based sleep study that’s considered the gold standard for diagnosing sleep disorders.

By contrast, sleep trackers that are worn on the wrist typically rely on pulse or heart rate “to guesstimate” the brain’s electrical activity during sleep (which an electroencephalogram, or EEG, would reveal in a sleep lab), says Breus. And sleep-tracker rings that are worn on your finger use body temperature, body movement, heart rate, and heart rate variability (fluctuations in the time between heartbeats) to gauge sleep quality.  

Unfortunate side effects of orthosomnia

                                                    Photo-Illustration by Chloe Dowling (Source Images: MirageC/Getty Images, Ljupco/Getty Images)

The trouble with having an unhealthy fixation on sleep metrics is that it can fuel anxiety and exacerbate insomnia in those who have it. People who have orthosomnia may feel nervous about going to sleep, staying asleep, or achieving certain sleep metrics such as deep sleep, REM sleep, sleep latency (how long it takes to fall asleep), or sleep efficiency, the percentage of time you actually spend asleep as opposed to lying in bed. (All of these metrics are included on certain sleep trackers.) As a result, they may end up lying awake longer at night, Baron says.

“Sleep is one of those things you can’t perfect,” Baron says. “Some nights you can do everything right and still not get a good night’s sleep. You can’t over-control it.” 

But that doesn’t stop some people from trying. “People over-focus on everything related to sleep because of the availability of data,” Breus says. And they often share it with other people. “It becomes a point of discussion—what used to be called water-cooler talk,” he adds.

How to control orthosomnia

Rather than obsessing about the minutiae of your sleep, it’s better to think about your goals for improving your shuteye, Breus says: Do you want to sleep longer? Wake up feeling better rested? Something else?

Then, you can use the feedback you get from a sleep tracker to modify your behaviour—including your eating, drinking, and stress-management habits and your use of electronic devices in the evening—to try to set yourself up for a better night’s sleep. “Self-monitoring and goal-setting are cornerstones of any sort of behaviour change,” Baron says.

But there’s no need to check the data from your sleep tracker every day. Instead, it’s better to look for trends or big variations once a week or compare your weekday data to your weekend data, Breus says. “That’s how everybody can utilize a tracker without becoming cuckoo about it.”

To improve your sleep quality, make an effort to get on a regular schedule, with consistent bedtimes and wake-up times, Baron says. In the morning, pay more attention to how you feel than the numbers on your tracker’s app.

If, despite taking these steps, you continue to find yourself obsessing over your sleep data or feeling anxious about your sleep, it may be time to take a break from using a tracker. “For some people, paying too much attention backfires,” Baron says. “How you sleep really should be about how you feel.” 

If you can’t resist monitoring your sleep quality, you may be better off keeping a written sleep diary, says Breus. In the morning, write down your bedtime and wake-up time, how many times you woke up during the night, and how you’d rate your sleep quality on a scale from one to five.

If anxiety about sleep continues to haunt you, you may benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) with a trained therapist, an online course, or an app. CBT-I uses various strategies to change people’s sleep-related habits and attitudes that might be perpetuating their sleep troubles. It’s been shown to be highly effective.

https://time.com/7311740/sleep-anxiety-orthosomnia/

Why sleep tech could be making insomnia worse

From standard.co.uk

By Jessica Salter

From fancy rings to smart apps, and even high-tech temperature-adjusting mattress toppers, the global sleep tech market is worth more than $21bn. But is our obsession actually destroying our health? Jessica Salter reports 

I am, I admit, a sleep swot. Or at least, I try really hard to get the top (sleep) marks. I wear an Oura ring (so does Prince Harry), a sleek device that gives me a “sleep score” based on how well I slept the night before (made up of how quickly I fell asleep, how much deep or REM sleep and number of total hours), and that plays into a “readiness score” I get for the day ahead. I track my sleep in other ways, too: my Apple Watch also watches out for sleep apnoea, while my Eight Sleep mattress topper – a high tech device that automatically adjusts its temperature to increase the amount of REM sleep – gives me a report in the morning too.

 

Getty Images

I am mildly obsessed with them all, in different ways. As are many of us: the global sleep tech market is estimated to grow by 18% to $95.2bn by 2032, according to Global Market Insights. But I’m also alive to the possibility that too much monitoring can cause its own problems. Because, you see, I’ve been here before. In 2015, I was an early adopter of the Jawbone – now defunct – which was one of the first wearables you could track sleep on. It was – looking back now – pretty rudimentary, and far from accurate. But my terrible sleep patterns (I’ve been a lifelong insomniac) laid out in black and white sent me into a tailspin before bed. Eventually, I had to quit it.

“One of the major causes of poor sleep, is anxiety,” agrees Bethany Hughes, co-founder of The Remedy Clinic, based in Harley Street (remedy-clinic.com). “Most people suffer from some form of anxiety these days; add in your sleep tracker or device telling you that you’re not hitting your sleep goals, and you’re adding to the problem further.” American researchers have dubbed those who have an unhealthy obsession with their sleep “orthosomniacs” and found that ironically, orthosomniacs actually worsened their chance of a good night’s sleep.

Advice for a good night’s sleep can often be simple: wind-down time, no screens before bed, and a dark and cool room, paired with blackout blinds or an eye mask

Worrying about our sleep seems to be a national sport. Whilst sleep experts consistently say we need between 7-9 hours of shut eye a night, 60% of us don’t get six hours a night, according to The Clean Sleep Report 2024. The consequences can be devastating on our health. Along with the short-term effect on our mood and motivation, studies show that a lack of sleep can lead weight gain and obesity, heart health problems, and an increased risk of dementia amongst others.

The advice is often quite simple: go to bed and get up at a consistent time each day (including weekends), wind down properly before bed (meaning no blue lights from screens) and make your bedroom conducive to a good night’s sleep, meaning a dark and cool room (temperature around 18C, paired with blackout blinds or an eye mask). But what if you’ve heard all that a million times, and still sleep eludes you? It’s the reason so many of us are seduced by the nearly $60bn sleep market (which dwarves the sleep tech segment), and even by suggestions from TikTok (that ever reliable purveyor of health news), where there are more than 3.5m videos devoted to #sleep.

“One of the challenges is that few of us are equipped with evidence-based knowledge and information about sleep,” says Dr Rebecca Robbins, a sleep scientist at Brigham and Women's Hospital. “Rarely, outside of formal medical education, do we receive sleep instruction; even medical doctors receive about two hours on average of sleep education in medical training.”

It was in a quest to end my insomnia – and really understand the reason I couldn’t sleep – that I turned back to sleep tech at the start of the year. I had been advised to wear the ring by Dr Mohammed Enayat, founder of the longevity clinic HUM2N in South Kensington, who was also testing 120 bio markers in my body to find any biological reasons for my lack of sleep. My tests revealed a punishingly low level of magnesium, for which he prescribed me medical-grade supplements. But he also advised using the Oura – with which he has no affiliation – to help with lifestyle habit forming, too.

I quickly found that as it monitored my heart rate variability and temperature, it could give me prompts about what things I did that naturally mucked up my sleep – things that no amount of magnesium was going to fix. A couple of glasses of wine in the evening quickly showed up as terrible for my sleep score (I could squeak by on the odd one). A late-night workout? Surprisingly fine. Not getting enough steps in a day: often fitful sleep. It was real-time little world nudges that I needed to learn how to fulfil one of the most basic bodily functions.

A couple of glasses of wine can seriously affect sleep quality

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Rhian Stephenson, nutritionist, naturopath and founder of ARTAH (artah.co) says she thinks “any tech that gives you a better understanding of your how certain lifestyle habits affect your sleep or overall health is great. We’re never taught to observe how we feel in relation to what we eat, drink or do, so becoming more mindful of how our choices affect our health is great.” She says that while she’s long been telling patients that alcohol affects their sleep, it’s not until they see it on their own “sleep report” via their Oura ring app, that they see its real effect.

But she agrees with Hughes that there are risks. “It’s easy to become obsessed with metrics and to cause anxiety when they’re out of the good” range.” She worries for the people who get a bad score, “and then feel anxious which can have a negative impact on the choices they make for the rest of the day.” I have occasionally had the opposite: that after being woken up several times by a small child, my reports told me I had actually got enough of the deep and REM sleep that I needed – and that I’d be ok for the coming day.  

While I found that reassuring, it’s something Hughes would prefer me to gauge for myself. She thinks we’d benefit from dialling down the tech, and instead listening more to our bodies. “We can be in danger of getting caught in the data, and the tools that should open our eyes, actually dampen our own ability to hear ourselves.” Really, the bags beneath my eyes tell me all I need to know.

https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/wellness/oura-ring-sleep-tech-mattress-health-prince-harry-b1189451.html