Sleep trackers can make insomnia worse | Hacker News Reader

Sleep trackers can make insomnia worse

nytimes.com

115 pointsbookofjoe137 comments

This reminds me of Goodhart's law:

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

I don't think this is a textbox example of Goodhart's law.

A healthy amount of sleep is a great target and measure, just like staying within a healthy weight range and lots of other biometrics.

I think Goodhart's law applies to people gaming the system or juking the stats to inflate a measured number causing the number to lose meaning. It doesn't matter what you do, getting enough sleep is important.

Yeah, sleep is actually a good fundamental goal in itself, not a gameable proxy for something else.

How so? Can't think of a thing that's more a means to an end than sleep - you have to sleep to be able to live your life! Barring those who can call up lucid dreams at will[0], there's zero point in optimizing for sleep as a terminal goal. I mean, if more sleep was a good fundamental goal, then suicide would be an optimal strategy - we get all the sleep in the world when we're dead.

[0] - somehow they exist and they don't use it as a personal holodeck to escape reality, which tells me lucid dreaming must be overrated.

It is a good fundamental goal not because it itself is the end but because there is ample evidence that a very large number of quality of life measures have a dependency on sleep.

You'd have those QoL measures as fundamental goals then, not sleep.

-- lucid dreaming

I've had over 100 lucid dreams, although none recently. My crowning achievement was summoning Socrates that would teach me things using the socratic method (only asking questions). The thing that blows my mind today is I was able to take away real value from these conversations even though I supplied both the questions and the answers.

Why didn't I use it as a personal holodeck to escape reality? Reality is a bigger, more interesting, and more exciting place than inside my own head.

> The thing that blows my mind today is I was able to take away real value from these conversations even though I supplied both the questions and the answers.

Not surprising - whenever we think, we supply both inputs and outputs ourselves :).

If I had that level of vividness of dreams and I could make them lucid, I'd definitely want to sleep more than I do now, to push experiments such as yours to sleep time. I mean, from what I read about lucid dreams, in best cases you have enough control over it that you could essentially use it as a sandbox prototyping environment!

> If I had that level of vividness of dreams and I could make them lucid

Lucid dreaming is actually a skill anyone can learn.

Edit: Now that I think about it, the population is probably less than anyone. Anyone that can get a goods night rest can learn how to lucid dream, and anyone that routinely enters REM sleep has a decent shot at it.

I've been able to lucid dream on a few occasions. What I really want is the ability to vividly imagine constructions while awake. Like design an A/C motor in my head without paper. Not to that degree but those fuzzy concepts that you loosely feel the connections of, I'd like to be able to 'draw it out' in my mind and use those visuals to work out other aspects.

Yup, me too. Apparently the capability to form vivid mental images is not a human universal. See this informal poll: https://twitter.com/backus/status/1091203973246111744?lang=e.... Unfortunately, I fall into the 27% that choose (1), i.e. they see nothing.

I really, really, really wish vividness of mental images would be trainable. I so want it.

I find it hard to believe that 39% see a red star or that 57% see a pink or red star. After minutes of trying, I can vaguely fool myself into thinking I can see (2) a faint black on black outline of a star as if you traced it out the way you'd draw it with crossing lines--I was mentally tracing out that pattern repeatedly.

Color is rare. I mostly don't even notice in most dreams except a very few where it's central, like the one time I saw a colorful dreamcatcher-like crystal mobile-thing after waking from a dream and enjoying still having it from my dream, only to wake up and realize that they were both dreams. Doh!

I keep believing I can learn to visualize based on the fact that seeing is hallucinating. We take samples of light and imagine that we're actually seeing the world when really we're guessing that's what it is and synthesizing what we see. A great example of this was when I came back from a tropical vacation and back in the city a leaf blew past my feet. I swear I clearly saw a small lizard (like I'd testify that I saw a glimpse of one) as I had been seeing for the past few weeks. I saw the leaf on the second glance. So if I can conjure a lizard, I can draw some cylinders and wires eventually.

Most of the time I can't visualize either while awake but sometimes I can and my dreaming is almost always in color (I've had dreams where part of it turned grayscale and that was quite distinctive). I also over decades of sleep issues noticed that I often visualize unintentionally right before I fall asleep and sometimes attempting to do so can help me get to sleep. Some people seem to think that NMDA receptors might be involved somehow. I think in my case images do sometimes appear very briefly even when I can't visualize. On the flip side, I don't think even people who visualize well are usually able to hold a detailed image in mind for a long time and examine different parts of it individually (however I could be wrong about this, it is just my impression; I think people can usually recall the image at least a few times). It might be that my brain is just prioritizing a different representation.

My internal audio reproduction seems to be quite good (which would be great if I could remember more music, or at least whole songs, to play on my internal jukebox :/ - sometimes I do remember more when dreaming). I think recall/visualization/etc. is affected by limited working memory capacity and how working and long term memory interact; I suspect that is often the major limitation when awake also and would still apply to some extent when asleep (although things can clearly work somewhat differently when asleep).

I do believe that a majority of people can visualize fairly easily since it seems like most people can describe the appearance of someone they just met when not looking at them, which I am unable to do (most days). Yes there are non visual tricks to do that, but it does seem like many people do that type of thing effortlessly and also for things they are less likely to have previously learned tricks about. When I do know someone better I seem to be better able to recognize their distinctive style of movement than most people.

Dreaming is strange... lately I haven't been wanting to be aware of my dreams at all since I often end up with events looping while I am increasingly paralyzed (and of course everyone else want me to do something). I've noticed this seems more likely to happen on days I take baclofen (as a help stay asleep sleep aid), but it happens at other times also and happened occasionaly before I ever took baclofen.

> The thing that blows my mind today is I was able to take away real value from these conversations even though I supplied both the questions and the answers.

Well it worked for Socrates in that way too - he just happeed to be awake :)

Sleep is a fundamental need for the human body, on par with food and (ok, maybe lower than) oxygen.

Maybe you're blessed with effortlessly getting enough of it, which in case congratulations. A lot of the people around you are not.

One thing I'm not saying is you should maximize sleep. Just get enough, and get good quality. Maybe that's our misunderstanding.

I see your point, but this ignores anxiety, sleep quality and training yourself to answer your body signals.

First, targeting a metric may create a counter productive stress that can make you sleep less.

Second, the device, and the process, may induce a sleep of lesser quality.

Last, always targeting numbers doesn't force you to listen to your body, an ability that our society is losing more and more. You don't need "8h of sleep". You need to sleep at the time and duration that your feelings indicate to you. Failing to do that result in plenty of problems, including oversleeping, sleeping at bad hours, neglecting diet related to sleep, ignoring light, not adapting to punctual overloads, etc.

Now, yes, Goodhart's law is more about cheating a system. But it's kinda what you do: you try to bypass your natural way of calibrating with sleep and only see a metric. We do that for a lot of things: food, sport, work, etc. And because of that, we behave erratically.

You need to sleep at the time and duration that your feelings indicate to you

It's oversimplification. Those signals are dependent on light, among other things. And unless you live with no electricity they may fool you.

> And unless you live with no electricity they may fool you.

I live in Scotland - during the winter we get 8-ish hours of daylight, during the summer we get more like 17,(to the point that it doesn't actually get properly dark at night). Routine is far more important here than natural light.

Absolutely, but establishing routine means overwriting your natural signals with acquired habit, not following them.

In a good example of Goodhart's law, there's a measure that tells you something useful, but it becomes less useful when you set a target. The three points you make argue almost as much against measuring at all as they do against setting a target.

Also, your arguments center on a metric being used as a substitute for making positive changes, rather than being used together alongside positive changes. This can happen with any measure/target. For example, if you set a target of 0 cigarettes smoked per day, sure, it's possible to just stress about the target and end up smoking more. That doesn't mean the target is bad, it just means it needs to be accompanied by action to make it useful.

Your argument would make sense if sleep processes were being measured via EEG or similar means, but virtually all "sleep trackers" are just movement trackers; they're absolutely measuring a proxy that can be gamed.

> virtually all "sleep trackers" are just movement trackers

This has been false since March 2016 when Fitbit introduced sleep stage analysis based on heart rate variability. I work for Fitbit but don't speak for Fitbit. Check my comment history for a link to a help article with details.

I think Goodhart's law applies to people gaming the system or juking the stats to inflate a measured number

Indeed, it is. From TFA: "In the case study on orthosomnia, researchers found that patients had been spending excessive time in bed to try to increase their sleep numbers, which may have made their insomnia worse." (emphasis mine)

I found it to be the opposite. I knew I wasn't getting enough sleep and so I would constantly look at my clock, phone, watch, etc. so that I could get an idea of how little I was getting. When I got a fitbit I stopped worrying about looking at my watch constantly to see when I fell asleep as it would tell me in the morning. I still have sleep anxiety and I'm only averaging 5 hours of sleep per night, if I have something I can't miss (like a flight) the next morning I still will often get none, but it's not as bad as it was.

Isn’t that pretty common? If I know I have to get up unusually early I can never sleep. If I have to rise at 4AM to drive to a bicycling event that starts at 6 I can never sleep before that. Same for very early flight departures or anything out of routine. I’ve adjusted by just getting up so early every day that there’s no possibility of anything being extra-early!

I don't think so. I travel regularly to Sydney for work, the flight we catch to get a full working day has a check-in at 5am. None of my colleagues who I travel with have this problem.

I try and deal with it by avoiding early flights if possible and flying the day before and staying the night but it's not always convenient with schedules, etc.

I found that if I set two independent alarms (i.e. my phone and my alarm clock), I sleep much more soundly when I need to get up early -- the second alarm gives me reassurance that I won't oversleep even if my phone battery dies so I sleep better

I had the same. I'll just reply w/ a laundry list of things that helped me. Black out blinds and eye mask, eliminate all sources of light in the room. Keep the heat down about 64 in the winter, in the summer I sleep w/ a thin blanket and in my underwear. Go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time even on the weekends. Exercise daily. No coffee after 3pm. No eletronics 2 hours before bed. I also sometimes take melatonin.

Thanks for that.

Unfortunately because I live in New Zealand for a global company I often have meetings in the middle of the night so the no computer before sleep is tough, I'm also worked up after those meetings and usually need to wind down somehow.

I do try and do most of the above, including no coffee after 12 (which is tough because I love coffee).

No offense but why don’t you change jobs? It seems as if the ‘lifestyle’ that your company forces upon you does not fit your personal needs

None taken, it's more interesting to work for a large scale global company. Solutions that I help develop are used by hundreds of millions if not billions of people every day. Very few companies in the local market have that scale.

It will get better at some point, we're just delivering a lot of projects in Europe but attention will shift to this part of the world next. But if it doesn't look like it will improve I'll probably look for something else when the current set of products are in market.

I also choose to have meetings at night, work would happily pay for me to fly to Europe but I try and avoid flights when bluejeans will suffice for environmental reasons.

Also - you get to live in New Zealand

Have you tried decaf coffee? Would highly recommend it as another no caffeine in the afternoon advocate.

> Black out blinds and eye mask, eliminate all sources of light in the room

Why do you need black-out blinds if you have an eye mask?

Most eye masks are not true blackout, some light still seeps in at the edges. Same deal with blackout blinds unless they're positioned millimetre perfect.

Combining the two resolves both edge cases sufficiently well that they cease to matter, and both can now be slightly offset without creating any problems. This is especially useful with the eye mask as it wont stay exactly where it was due to moving in your sleep.

> Same deal with blackout blinds unless they're positioned millimetre perfect.

Double layering usually fixes this issue e.g. blackout blinds + blackout curtains, or shutters (non-louvered) + blackout curtains.

Any form of double layering solves the problem, really. Whether it's double layered at the window, or double layering in discrete locations (windows & eyes), having two distinct solutions with their own strengths and weaknesses can usually resolve edge cases in both.

...this applies to lots of things in IT as well, not just window curtains :-)

> Exercise daily.

Although daily might be a bit extreme, the effect of regular exercise on sleep is pretty profound, at least in my case. I've been sleeping longer and better (according to my Fitbit) since I started working out and running, and if I have to have more than a few days off my sleep really starts to suffer.

> daily might be a bit extreme

You can exercise daily without issue for extended periods of time, you just can't exercise daily to the limit (or even anywhere close to). How to do it really depends on the activity (or activities).

Nice explanation for calisthenics, but if you pay attention you can transpose it to any activity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA9OklE7r3A

There was a similar blog post at Runtastic but I can't seem to find it RN.

Accurate. I used to go to the gym and lift weights 6 days a week regularly, slept fine. I just took two months off and didn’t exercise at all. I hopped back into my gym routine again this week and besides being extremely sore (which can happen ever if you only take a week off), I can barely fall asleep and the quality of sleep is horrible. I’ve read that it’s common among bodybuilders who train too hard. It may be a a shock to the central nervous system (heavy compounds like deadlifts can do that).

> I would constantly look at my clock, phone, watch, etc.

I have a projection clock which displays a dull red digital clock on the ceiling. It means if I do wake up I can check the time without having to roll over, rind a bright clock etc. It’s so dull it doesn’t disturb my sleep and I find really useful to have.

I work for Fitbit. Even though I don't speak for Fitbit, usually I try to keep my personal tone consistent with the friendly, positive tone Fitbit's branding wants to use. But I feel driven to respond to one part of the article in a way that's bluntly critical.

One cautionary tale from the case study: A woman came in reporting that she had an average sleep efficiency of only 60 percent, according to her tracker. She was given medication for restless leg syndrome, tested negative for disordered breathing, and underwent a formal sleep study. But after being told that she had slept deeply in the lab, she was not reassured.

“Then why does my Fitbit say I am sleeping poorly?” she asked.

The "cautionary tale" part seems to be saying that this is an example of irrational anxiety caused by home sleep tracking. That's a stupid assumption to make. A sleep study does a precise measurement of how well you sleep in a lab. The words "in the lab" are right there in the article. Did this article really have to be rushed to press so fast that nobody could take 2 seconds to realize that there could be issues present in her nightly sleep environment that aren't present in the lab? Her question is valid.

It could be as simple as "you sleep badly because your cat jumps up on the bed". No cat in the lab.

Or a bright blue LED of one of her bedroom appliances, noise, temperature, blanket, night owl neighbors, etc. Never had one of these studies, but I suppose the lab strives towards an ideal sleeping environment to identify pathological causes.

Btw, it's also possible for the lab environment to be unrealistically bad. You have all these electrodes and wires attached to your head and other body parts, sleeping in an unfamiliar environment, if you need to use the bathroom then you have to tell the technician to come unhook you from the wires and then re-hook you when you're back... and on the subject of bright LEDs, there were a couple in the room that I covered up with spare items of clothing the last time I got a sleep study.

But yes, there might well be much worse problems at home. I think a lab sleep study is best suited for detecting problems like sleep apnea, where it doesn't matter when you fell asleep as long as you did eventually. Though even for that, you'd probably have to make sure your sleeping position is about the same.

Yeah, it would be interesting if she had worn her Fitbit during the lab study, and we knew whether the Fitbit score during that time was the same or different. Otherwise it's kind of a meaningless anecdote. Maybe there's additional relevant detail that was not included in the article.

Yeah, worrying about sleep trackers can make insomnia worse.

This is basic sleep hygiene, and I don't know that there any other way than through.

One of the first things to learn is that worrying about bad sleep is one of the major causes of bad sleep. Getting out of that riddle solved a substantial part of my sleep problems.

Once you're on the other side, having data is much better than not having it.

I have about six years worth of sleep duration (and activity during sleep) data. There still isn't a single piece of FOSS software that would deal with that, I could import it into Postgres and view with Grafana, but I ain't no scientist or super interested in sleep science so there's very few conclusions I could make from it. Would love someone picking up this task :P

I’m pretty sure someone could take a raspberry pi with a battery power source and reconstruct a home sleep apnea device. If you just want to use an accelerometer you could probably do the same.

Op wants analysis. He already has the measurementd

What's wrong with Excel?

It's Windows-only and doesn't contain any knowledge about sleep science. As I said, I could import the data anywhere, but that alone is not worth much.

There's an app I haven't tried called Fluxtream that is designed for the quantitative self: https://github.com/fluxtream

There's a hosted version but sounds like you'd want to run your own instance.

I started tracking the "Sleep as Android" app and it made my insomnia worse.

Someone recommended me a treatment called "Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Insomnia" - or CBT-I, and it was just amazing. What worked out the most was Sleep Privation and not worrying about my sleep, I Highly recommend this to everyone who is struggling. (Note aside, the first days of sleep privation are an absolute hell, I wanted to literally die, but it's worth at the end).

Can you explain what sleep privation is? It's pretty hard to google.

I’m guessing he means sleep compression where you commit to a waking time, and start by sleeping just 6 hours or so, then slowly build up. The goal is to maximize sleep efficiency and minimize time spent in bed awake. Really makes you associate bed with sleep, and makes your sleep very efficient

A component of CBTi is sleep restriction, whereby you limit your hours in bed and wake at the same time every day. By both anchoring your circadian rhythm to that waking time and building sleep drive at night you can reduce sleep onset latency, and maintenance issues throughout the night.

If you spend 8h total, you can dial back to 7, or as low as 6, on a temporary basis. Once your sleep restructures itself (which doesn't actually take that long), you can increase your total time in bed back to 8.

Even sleep therapy apps are pretty useless as they just regurgitate what ought to be freely available information.

Do you nap in this phase, or just have a few days totally dead?

Onset insomnia is (or was) my main thing. I tried this and remember feeling totally dead. Couldn't get through it.

I might rest my eyes for a few minutes, but avoid napping.

Keeping a steady waking time is the main thing. Rather than limiting myself to 6 or 7 hours I'll stay up reading to a low warm light until sufficient sleep pressure has built up (easy enough to identify). A preceding relaxation routine helps, and time away from electronics. I do a quick yoga stretching thing. If it so happens I hit the sack and can't fall asleep, I'll sit up for a couple of minutes, then try again.

have any resources on privation in particular?

Note that this doesn't actually work in all situations. I have a non-24 hour circadian rhythm and severe insomnia and for a long time I could only sleep on the shifting schedule, even with very little sleep for as long as I could manage (a couple of weeks or so). After a while figuring out which of various medications and practices seem to help (although my overall health is still not improving so it might just be an unknown health issue improving my sleep) I've been able to at least stop shifting around the clock, can usually get to sleep in an hour or so going to bed at about the same time as the day before, and now getting less sleep does seem to have some impact on my ability to get to sleep the next night. Not everyone with circadian issues has this and possibly people without might. That being said, it is a good technique when it works. Waking up at the same time every day seems to be more important than going to sleep at the same time and is both an indication of how well your sleep is doing and can be helpful in improving sleep.

The best thing I’ve found for insomnia, other than medication/melatonin, is imagining myself flying. Basically going to silly fantasy land bootstraps a sleep state pretty reliably.

Me also. The fantasy land should be all visual, though, no talking. Weird,but that's how it is for me

Actually I agree. If I’m too interested in the story I won’t sleep. There shouldn’t be a story.

It's great that you have such a strong imagination! I would love to be able to do that...

Can you not? Like as in you have aphantasia and can't picture things, or you just don't readily imagine stuff? Because if it's the first one I'm sorry for you, but in the second case it is something you can practise.

It’s usually just flying, for me.

I try and build little worlds in my head and fly around them, working on adding details as I go. I think it works because it blocks everything out and requires zero physical effort.

It’s usually flying for me as well. It’s just interesting enough to not be too Beijing. But it’s completely independent of what happened during the day, will tomorrow, etc.

I used to spend a lot of time flying and, thankfully, I've always found it easy to sleep on planes.

However, a few years back a colleague was building a server on a desk near me and it sounded very like the inside of a plane and I became very drowsy almost immediately!

I listen to BBC radio dramas - ones that aren't too dramatic. I usually manage to get in about 10 minutes before I fall asleep. Either that or the 531 podcast.

Just read “Why We Sleep”. Never had a problem getting to sleep until I started reading that book.

I started stressing hard if I didn’t get to sleep right away. Put it down for a few days and all is well again.

Excellent book, freaked me the f out.

That book is one of those hyped volumes on Hacker News which, while good, can have diminishing returns. When everyone claims to get benefits from it, a dissenting opinion can make oneself question one's lifestyle. "Deep Work" by Cal Newport is another example.

Isn't this just the next level of "If I go to sleep right now I'll get 7 hours ... 6 hours ... 4.5 hours ... <panics>"?

For me the problem isn't getting to sleep or sleep duration- it's that my Xiaomi band reports consistently that I only get 10 - 30 mins of deep sleep in an 8 hour period.

And I consistently feel tired even before checking those stats, so I think they're accurate.

I can't seem to figure out how to solve this.

I'm average size (a bit under weight) and not a snorer. I stop eating by 7pm, stop screen time by 8pm, eliminate all light, and sleep in a cool, comfortable bed (that I only use for sleeping).

Aerobic exercise and morning sunlight don't seem to matter.

What else is there to do?

Do you exercise consistently? Hows your diet?

I get decent aerobic exercise 3 times a week or more.

I should start lifting again.

My diet is mostly veggies, eggs, chicken, fiber cereal, nuts, berries, and chocolate.

What's on your mind, while you're trying to sleep?

Well, that is the question, isn't it?

I feel like I dream all night long. Random dreams- nothing that speaks to a particular worry.

Then, what's the concern?

That a little machine with a motion sensor and a few if statements is determining the quality of their sleep. (In fairness they also complain of being tired)

It's their complaint that concerns me.

The concern is feeling tired all the time, mainly.

My fitness band's "Deep Sleep" count seems to correspond to how tired I feel, even before looking at it.

Completely anecdotal, but everytime I get a hard run in - especially in the evening I stay up way later than I typically would even if its hours before I try and sleep. Lifting is the opposite and helps me fall asleep. Maybe try running in the morning and lifting in the evening if thats an option for you. Your diet looks on point though it doesnt look it would cause any issues. Maybe try reading 1 - 1.5 hrs before you'd sleep to help clear your mind.

How are you with Alcohol and Caffeine intake?

Zero alcohol for the last 10 years.

Zero caffeine for the last 3.5 years.

Do these abstinences bespeak an anxiety or mood disorder?

Nah, I just don't care about alcohol, and coffee gives me heartburn (which is normally well under control thanks to a PPI).

I'd look at any long term medication as a factor.

PPIs can definitely affect magnesium. https://www.gov.uk/drug-safety-update/proton-pump-inhibitors...

On the other hand if your heartburn causes reflux then the PPI can help sleep. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24942514

How about marijuana?

Kind of taboo, since most like to think there's no side effects, but many find it can mess with REM cycles and, consequently, nightly dreaming[1]. REM, being where you get your most restful sleeping done.

Although stopping cold turkey is likely to not help much initially.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7b7gn4/why-are-your-dream...

Good question. Zero marijuana, ever. The only drug I do is sugar.

> The only drug I do is sugar

(Anecdata) Which is a terrible drug for me, creating absurd and artificial peaks and droughts of energy, completely throwing me off. The worst part is during the low sections I have some craving that keeps me on my toes, like some raw hunt/forage impetus, making me even more tired. Overall low carb diet and skipping on sweet things entirely fixes it for me.

Have you done a sleep study? It can detect if you are waking and why. Even if you think you don't snore you might have airway issues.

Of course results vary, mine basically lead to the doctor saying I was a bit below normal and losing some weight (5-10kg) should help, but it didn't address the real issue which was that I take too long to get to sleep in the first place.

I have thought about it, although it is quite expensive ($1500 - $2000 out of pocket).

I am a few kilos under weight for my height, so it hasn't felt like an obvious move. But I do want to get to the bottom of my sleep issues- it affects every aspect of my life.

That's a shame. I think I paid about $70 being in Australia with the other ~$500 covered. If they had managed to fix me, it would be probably be a very good investment for Medicare since poor sleep predicts many issues.

You could try nasal strips to open up your nose as a cheap hack in the meantime and see if it works. They make me itchy so I stopped, but did help my airflow when they were on.

Have you seen a sleep specialist or done a full sleep study?

Have you done any experiments with sleeping position?

On my back I usually have trouble sleeping, on my left side I'm well enough to get a full night's sleep (usually with some rolling around), but on my right side, with my arms in the right position (right arm under pillow and curled back under my head, left arm over pillow and reaching around towards the other arm's elbow), I'm usually completely out.

That's very interesting. I hadn't considered that at all. I do find I fall asleep on my side, and perhaps wake up when my hand falls asleep or something.

Good idea.

A few things you could try: taking a magnesium supplement, use a weighted blanket, add some exercise to your routine. Is there noise that might be waking you up? A white noise machine or earplugs could help. Are you sharing your bed with someone? Their tossing and turning could affect your sleep, so fixing your bed frame and getting a mattress which isolates motion could both help. Is your life stressful? That could be something else to address.

Finally, keep in mind that possibly, these wrist sensors may not actually be able to detect deep sleep all that well.

A lot of good things to consider there, thank you.

To start with, I'll try to add lifting to my routine and maybe a magnesium supplement. I might do the supplement first for a week, to see if it has any impact.

Magnesium makes a huge difference for me.

Best thing for my insomnia has honestly just been finding a job where it doesn't matter if it turn up 10-30 minutes late whenever.

I came to terms that I have a night learning circadian rhythm and if I don't have to worry about being told off for turning up "late" I've slept so much better and consistently and no stressing in a panic that I can't sleep at 5am.

I have one golden rule: Where I sleep, there are no electronic devices. I am surrounded by techy stuff all day long. I want a break from all of it altleast 8 hours a day. I would never let a device track my sleep on a regular basis. Feels great, I sleep tight and feel restored in the morning.

Yes, people who sleep well and feel restful after sleeping have no need for sleep tracking devices.

I submit that people with a sleep disorder dont have a need for a speep tracker either. Just because there is technology to do something doesn't mean it is the best choice to use it.

I'm not sure about this.

I have no sleeping disorder but track my sleep via Fitbit. It helps me plan my sleep. So for example, if I find that I have not slept enough for the night I make sure I retire early the next day. Also, the days I find I have not had enough sleep I don't go for my morning runs so as to avoid injury. Of course relying on body's own signals would do the job but I find that the trackers augment the process.

In my experience my quality of life has increased because of sleep tracking.

For the type of people who get anxious about tracking sleep, is reading this article going to cause them sleep anxiety anxiety? If so, should the authors of the article consider their responsibility in publishing it? I'm only about 40% serious here... but, rereading the opening sentence—"Are you sabotaging your sleep in your quest to improve it?"—that seems remarkably well-optimized to exacerbate the worries of an already nervous person.

Another question: among the people who act like hypochondriacs about their sleep trackers, how many of them would act like hypochondriacs about something else if they didn't have sleep trackers? (How many of them do this while also having a sleep tracker?) I think the null hypothesis is that being an orthosomniac is much more a function of the person (predisposed towards anxiety conditions) than of the device.

The only thing I see mentioned that (some) sleep trackers do that seems like it might specifically promote anxiety is this: "If you sleep poorly, the app will send a prompt asking what might have gone wrong. A late meal? Too much coffee? Too much to drink? Skipped the gym?" But if that were the point, the article would have a much different title.

I anecdotally found this to be true for myself. Especially on Sunday night I would start stressing about my sleep numbers.

Needless to say, if anyone would like to buy a used fitbit versa...

Sleep trackers helped me discover the cause of my constant day time fatigue. I discovered just how much I was snoring at night. I was able to self diagnose my sleep apnea and took steps to improve it. I use the tracker as a habit now, but only look at the number once a month or so to get a snapshot of my sleep health.

So overall for me, tracking sleep gave me priceless insights which I could improve upon.

How do you improve symptoms of sleep apnea without CPAP device?

This doesn't surprise me. When I have insomnia, it is invariably caused by being aware of and worrying about the process of sleeping.

Yeah - the less I think about sleep the more likely it's going to happen. I also find that I can't care about not getting enough sleep - I used to do math in my head "ok if I fall asleep now it'll still be 4 hours" - I've learned that I can function on zero sleep for a day if I really have to, so it's no longer a threat to myself, and I don't worry about not sleeping because of it.

I have 2 sleep trackers, the beauty rest wifi unit that goes under the mattress and a fitbit. I have sleep apnea and wanted to watch my sleep for scores. I normally dont get much deep sleep after 4 hours, or 3rd cycle of sleep. Setting my alarm to wake up at 4 am, then go back to sleep, body resets for 1 more cycle with a short deep sleep cycle. Sleep Hacking.

what time do you go to sleep?

10 most times, Midnight on occasion.

Interesting. My bed tracks my sleep but I only get the report in the morning and not live. My phone isn’t near my bed and I only interact with the Internet using my Google Home when I’m in my bedroom. All the sleep tracker has done is let me know what my sleep looks like.

Most weeks it’s good but lately I’ve been doing poorly - sleeping too little.

My experience has been the opposite of making it worse. When I started using my watch to track sleep I was sleeping 3-4 hours per night then one long night of sleep (7-8 hours) once a week. I was basically crashing from exhaustion.

I started tracking my sleep, and used the app to find the best “go to sleep” time target. I’ve gradually increased my sleep time to just over 6 hours a night with one or two 8 hour nights on the weekend.

My watch has been a critical tool for improving my sleep.

Edit to add: I also use the “Sleep with Me” podcast to fall asleep. That guy’s mumbling are pretty easy to fall asleep to.

It’s the opposite for me. With the tracker, I have solid evidence I got a few hours of sleep when I think I didn’t sleep at all. It makes me calm down and stops insomnia attacks from occurring.

Useful sleep hack from the military. I tried it and it seems to work: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/national-napping-da...

For me Apple Watch with ECG caused panic attacks.

Why, did it report anything unusual?

There’s a known correlation between increased https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoception and anxiety.

Part of how panic attacks work, for example is a feedback loop where you’re aware of the way your body is reacting to panicking (feeling your heart speed up, etc.), which makes you panic more.

Explored rather amusingly in The Pale King

https://books.google.com/books?id=gW0K6X-ThtAC&lpg=PA12&dq=p...

Exactly. I was in traffic jam, checked my pulse routinely and it was slightly more than usual: 80 BPM. I started to think that something wrong. now it became 90BPM, and here closed feedback loop caused almost 1800BPM. I have rushed to the ER and good doctors (thank god we have cheap medicine) helped me to go through this. Panic attacks continued for almost half year.

> almost 1800BPM

Uh…

For me, panic attacks were scariest when I had no idea what they were or while I was (or am) still uncertain that they're panic attacks. The fear that they're something worse drove the feedback loop.

Being able to identify them as anxiety (focusing quite acutely on constellations of familiar symptoms and reasoning about how they might or might not be anxiety-related) made me ride all subsequent ones out successfully, and they also grew milder and more short-lived.

If a mobile device acting as crappy medical equipment told me I was having heart problems, though, my anxiety would definitely increase.

I don't know about the parent poster, but apple watches have had a high rate of a.fib false positives.[0]

I'm not sure if that has been remediated yet.

[0]:https://www.biospace.com/article/apple-watch-atrial-fibrilla...

“The study used an older version of the Apple Watch, not the latest one launched in September, which had added a built-in electrocardiogram to its pulse sensor.”

Presumably the new version is more accurate

Have any studies been done on the new Apple watch’s effectiveness of detecting afib? I’m on mobile and couldn’t find anything with a quick search

Portable white-coat hypertension, yay!

Anecdote: My most exhausted coworkers are those who openly admit and talk about using sleep trackers.

I believe that the effect of sleep trackers is mostly psychological and they work in the same way all those self-help books do.

It seems logical that the ones having difficulties sleeping use tools to sleep better. So I'm not sure I understand your point and comparison with self-help books.

> Anecdote: My most exhausted coworkers are those who openly admit and talk about using sleep trackers.

Having terrible sleep would be a good reason to get a sleep tracker.

That's why I got a tracker myself. Though it was so imprecise I stopped using it after a few weeks (to be fair I got a cheap one).

At the end of the day I guess a true medical sleep study is the only option if you're under the impression of not getting enough of restful sleep.

"all those self-help books"? Which ones? Are you implying that these self-help books don't work? It seems like the quality of self-help books can vary widely so it seems strange to generalize about all of them.

I got a solution. Ready? Marijuana

Eh I just use the free program f.lux as it dims your computer screen's colours so that you aren't exposed to blue light before you sleep.

I wish my Samsung TV had such a feature.

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