Tracking my sleep made my insomnia worse

This year will forever go down as the year that I forgot how to sleep. I’ve gone from being a person who conks out the moment my head hits the pillow to someone who’s tried everything to quiet my racing thoughts, from valium to the odd prayer (I’m not religious, but it was worth a shot).

A couple of months ago, my ability to function was at an all-time low. I left a beloved jacket on the train, misplaced my keys and lost my phone —all within the space of a few days.

The day after losing my phone I received a stoic message from the supermarket: “Your phone was in our freezer. It’s at the front desk for you to collect”. It was welcome, but sobering news.

My anxiety rose by the day and I was losing more and more sleep as a result. I wanted to sleep perfectly, and according to my ‘data’, I never did. Credit:Stocksy

It’s obvious that my body wasn’t being given enough time to rest. For weeks I had been taking more than two hours to fall asleep (a massive "sleep onset latency"), plus I’d had been averaging 5.32 hours of sleep per night. Not to mention that my "sleep quality" had dipped to a devastating 53%.

Yes, like many misguided moderns, I had made the mistake of downloading a sleep tracking app on my phone.

But why wouldn’t you? All I had to do was leave my phone on the nightstand and the intricacies of my sleep cycle, every blip and undulation, were tracked as I slept.

As the app claimed to monitor the "depth" of my sleep, it claimed to wake me up while I was in "light sleep", sidestepping the jolt to the system that can come with using a traditional alarm. Upon waking, it also spits out what I’m sure most of us crave in the morning – raw data. And a graph!

The first time I used the app, I was amazed. 92% sleep quality? That’s like a high distinction in sleep! It also looked like I was sleeping particularly deeply at 4:20am which, well … I don’t know what that information was for. But I felt powerful knowing it.

After about a week of data had been mapped, I noticed a creeping need to beat my previous night’s score. Every ‘imperfect’ night of sleep brought a mounting sense of unease. Sleep used to be a time to switch off—for rest and respite. So why was it giving me performance anxiety?

In 2017, researchers in Chicago found that patients who use sleep trackers (both apps and wearable technology like Fitbits) were increasingly presenting with a condition they termed "orthosomnia" – an unhealthy obsession with the quest for perfect sleep. Many of these patients ended up seeking medical treatment after looking at their "data" self-diagnosing with sleep disorders.

It’s clear that I was on the verge of becoming one of them. I wanted to sleep perfectly, and according to my "data", I never did. My anxiety rose by the day and I was losing more and more sleep as a result.

The kicker is that sleep tracking apps may not actually tell you much beyond how much time you spent in bed. The one I used, for example, monitored movement levels via my phone’s microphone to approximate whether I was in deep or light sleep.

But while smartphones can do a lot, they can’t record brain activity. Studies have shown that sleep tracking apps can’t accurately discern the various stages of sleep. So while they may offer satisfying-looking graphs and data sets, most of that information is probably meaningless.

The only thing my sleep app seemed to be giving me was anxiety and insomnia, but I didn’t know it at the time.

I did everything I could to cure my sleep woes—lavender oil, breathing exercises, white noise, brown noise, binaural beats.

But nothing worked as well as deleting the app for good.

This article orignally appeared on SBS Life.

Source: Read Full Article