What is ‘orthosomnia’? Focusing on the sleep tracker can disrupt your sleep

Have you ever lied awake at night worried about how well you're going to be able to sleep? You're not alone, and the phenomenon even has a name.

Stressing about getting a good night’s sleep may be preventing you from having restful sleep every night, according to an Ottawa sleep expert.

As sleep tracking devices become more prevalent in bedrooms and people look to achieve the perfect night sleep, the focus on the sleep score disrupts sleep.

Andrew Holmes of Sleep Efficiency says the medical term for the obsession with sleep tracker data is “orthosomnia.”

What is orthosomnia?

“By definition, orthosomnia is the inability to fall asleep and/or stay asleep due to fear and anxiety of achieving optimal sleep, often exasperated by tracking devices,” Holmes told CTV Morning Live on Thursday.

“The irony is dripping from the bedroom walls here, people are obsessing over getting optimal sleep and that highest sleep score, and in doing so they’re actually creating a disorder.”

Holmes says there are over 100 different types of sleep disorders that have been recognized, and some are relatively new, like “orthosomnia” due to emerging trends.

Holmes says worrying about your sleep tracking data can create a “negative feedback loop where it’s doing more harm than good” for your sleep.

Signs you may be struggling with “orthosomnia” include reaching for the device to check your sleep score first thing in the morning and “feeling stress and anxiety” about your sleep score,” according to Holmes.

“Are you basing how you’re going to feel and your energy levels throughout the course of the day based on what the app is telling you or are you actually listening to your body. The last one may be, are you making massive changes to your overall sleep routine,” Holmes said.

“What it’s actually doing is causing people to spend more time in bed because they’re trying to increase that sleep score, when in fact what they’re doing is decreasing their sleep efficiency.”

How accurate are sleep tracking devices?

If you are using a sleep tracking device to monitor your sleep, Holmes recommends focusing on the data over a one week or a one-month period, instead of night-by-night data.

“Basically, what they’re looking to do is to establish the difference between when you’re awake and when you’re asleep, but also those stages of sleep as well,” Holmes said.

“The night-by-night variability only has about a 75 per cent accuracy week, whereas the overall trend of the week, because each night is so different, you’re looking more at 80 per cent. I would be more focused on best sleep practices rather than digging in (to the data) because what it can do it can become this negative feedback loop.”

Popular sleep trackers on the market include Apple Watch, the Oura Ring, Fitbit and Garmin.

Sleep hygiene techniques

Holmes says the best way to achieve a good night’s sleep is “getting back to basics.”

“There’s no substitute for natural sleep, so looking at the sleep hygiene techniques such as going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time, exposing yourself to as much daylight as you can because that brings balance to your sleep/wake cycle, exercising, of course, is a big piece of it,” Homes said.

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