The term orthosomnia was coined in a research paper in 2017, and I’m definitely seeing patients presenting with it. Similar to orthorexia, which is an unhealthy obsession with eating healthily, orthosomnia is an unhealthy focus on good quality sleep. In my clinic, I now see a lot of people who are too focused on health in general, going to the gym multiple times a week, taking wheatgrass shots, completely avoiding all caffeine, alcohol and sugar. Those people wouldn’t have previously presented to a sleep clinic, because they don’t actually have a sleep problem.
THE PROBLEM WITH TRACKERS
Sleep tracking devices are providing people with a lot more information about their sleep, but it’s not necessarily good quality or helpful information. Studies have compared the data you get from these trackers with devices we use in clinic practice, known as actiwatches, and the correlation is very poor. The data you get from a watch or a phone compared with a proper sleep study using a polysomnogram is even worse. Often though, even if we do our own study and show someone the data, and how badly it correlates to their watch or app, they still tend to believe their tracker.
Most trackers work on movement, some pick up on light and dark, and the more sophisticated ones, such as the Oura Ring, also include some pulse data. To put that in context, we would use 20-plus channels of physiological data recording in a sleep study. To determine what stages of sleep you’ve been in, we measure everything from your oxygen levels to your pulse rate and the flow of air. All that trackers can tell you is whether your arm was still and it was dark in your room!