Sleep Tracking- why it's making your sleep worse

One of the most common myths surrounding sleep relates to the amount of time we sleep each night. And of course, everybody sleeps, so everybody has an opinion on the subject. The advent of the smart-watch has compounded this further, and now, as well as the duration of time we are asleep for, we are able to worry about the type of sleep we are getting.  

As well as getting to bed early in order to ‘get their 8 hours’ people are also now waking up and panicking that they didn’t get the right amount of deep sleep. And this is a much harder issue to fix because you have less control over how deeply you sleep. This is leading to an upsurge in people worrying about a sleep disorder that may not even be there in a condition referred to in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine as ‘Orthosomnia’. 

Can a fitness tracker track my sleep? 

A fitness tracker can give you a rough idea of how you are sleeping at night. However, it is important to remember that it is only a rough guide. The sleep tracker function works by tracking movement during sleep. However, if you are somebody who moves a lot in your sleep, the tracker may not record this as deep sleep and on the other side of the coin, if you are awake all night but lie still it will appear you slept well. 

Monitoring the tracker obsessively may therefore lead you to the conclusion that you have a problem sleeping properly, where in truth you are just a bit of a fidget. 

We see lots of people who live and die by the results of their sleep trackers, and are finding that increasingly people are waking up and deciding how they are going to feel and what they are going to do that day based on what the trackers tells them. It increase hyper vigilance around sleep which is one of the main causes of insomnia.

For me, I don’t advise anyone to track their sleep other than by using a sleep diary they fill in each morning, and only then as part of a treatment programme. How does it help to know you aren’t getting enough sleep? You already know that as you were awake all night! It isn’t possible to micro manage sleep and improve certain stages of sleep whilst reducing others, so the information provided by the tracker is not only often inaccurate, but also leaves you feeling even more lost about how to fix your sleep. 

So how can I improve my sleep? 

The first thing to remember is not to panic. If you are falling asleep quickly at night and waking up close to your alarm in the morning, your sleep is almost certainly fine, even if you got less than 8 hours. And regardless of what your app may tell you, if you get a decent amount of sleep but still feel tired, then look at other reasons for this such as lifestyle, diet and stress levels rather than just focusing on quality of sleep.

If you are struggling to fall asleep at night, or feeling tired and sluggish during the day, it may be that you have the beginnings of a sleep disorder or need some support in getting a good night’s sleep. The NHS recommends CBT for insomnia for poor sleepers and with 80% of people improving sleep in under 4 weeks it doesn’t need to be a long term process.

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