Could Sleepmaxxing Be the Answer?
Many people have concerns about the quality and quantity of their sleep. Reportedly, 90% adults don't get enough sleep, whilst 25% experience insomnia on a Sunday night, ultimately affecting their health and wellbeing. Sleep can be disrupted by stress, health issues, relationship concerns, and even our bedrooms.
Advice frequently suggests ways to improve our sleep, with 2009 seeing the introduction of the first commercial fitness tracker to incorporate sleep analysis, the Fitbit Classic. Since then, many others, including Garmin, Whoop and Apple, have integrated sleep trackers into wrist-worn devices, as have smart rings such as Oura, Ultrahuman and RingConn.
Could sleepmaxxing be the answer? It offers some practical suggestions. No caffeine from early afternoon, no alcohol near bedtime, follow a consistent sleep schedule, retire to bed at the same time, including weekends, so anchoring your internal clock. Turn off phones, devices and TV 30-60 minutes before bed, go outdoors into morning light within an hour of waking up, keep your bedroom pitch dark, quiet and at a temperature of 16-18C. Various supplements, like melatonin, are suggested, as is mouth taping and nasal expanders to force nasal breathing.
When much of life is measured, rated and investigated, adhering to a ‘perfect’ sleep template could become overwhelming, ultimately become detrimental and resulting in orthosomnia, or obsessing about ways to optimise sleep. This initiative is not dissimilar to the ad-inspired recommendation of 10,000 steps each day, which was introduced to promote various sports goods and lifestyle choices, even though the criteria used has been discounted by scientists and industry professionals.
The concept of a sleep score is "completely made up", says Dr Alanna Hare, consultant of sleep medicine at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London. "There's nothing recognised in sleep science that’s a 'sleep score. That's just been created by manufacturers."3
Dr Neil Stanley, sleep expert and author of the book How to Sleep Well, conducted research into wrist-worn sleep trackers forty years ago and found that gamifying sleep creates more disordered sleeping. "When you track your sleep it gives you a number, which means you have a target. You get into this cycle of worrying about your quality or quantity of sleep based on figures."
Though commercial trackers are now more sophisticated, they work in much the same way, measuring your movement with the same limitations. "If you want to measure sleep, you have to measure the brain." Stanley adds, "Unless you're measuring the brain's activities, you're not measuring sleep." Devices vary, but in general they all provide users with a report of their night, broken into sleep stages - time awake, light sleep, deep sleep, and REM (rapid eye movement). often giving a "sleep score."
But sleep-tracking can make your sleep worse. Dr Hare says she's noticed trackers causing anxiety, with more patients coming to her with data from various trackers and questions about sleep that are probably contributing to their sleep difficulties. Even though some have had medical tests with reassuring results, this hasn't allayed their fears. She adds. "It's great that there's more focus on sleep as part of wellness, but sleep does not respond well to attempts to perfect it."
Relying too heavily on information provided by sleep trackers can result in an obsessive and compulsive focus about doing everything 'right'. Relying on sleep scores, magnesium and white noise machines can turn the simple act of sleeping into a minefield.
In one University of Oxford study, participants were given sleep trackers which assigned them a sleep score. The scores were randomised, and had no relation to how the participants had actually slept. The next day, participants rated their mood, fatigue levels and alertness, before tests checking their focus and reaction times. Researchers found that the people informed they'd slept badly reported feeling more fatigued and were less mentally alert - even though the sleep scores were all fake.
There's also the daytime impact to consider. Studies also show sleep trackers can affect how you function during the day, even when they're not accurate. The more we focus on something, the more it features in our thoughts. So, if we're told not to think of the colour yellow, we’d probably immediately think of it. If we’re buying a new car or doing home renovations, we suddenly become aware of the many instances around us. Similarly, learning our sleep scores can influence our perception of how we’ve slept upon awakening.
What does Dr Hare recommend for sleeping well?
Keep your bedroom cool, dark and quiet - within reason. "It doesn’t need to be pitch black, exactly 16-18C or totally silent," she says. "Just coolish, darkish and quietish."
Seeing bright light in the morning is good for regulating your body’s natural clock, your circadian rhythm. Doing light exercise, and eating a "healthy, Mediterranean-style diet with plenty of plant variability".
Above all, keep it simple - "anything else, you don't need it".
Susan Leigh, Counsellor and Hypnotherapist www.lifestyletherapy.net