Exploring the Impact of Wearable Technology on Tracking Sleep: Friend or Fo?

With the growing interest in health and wellness, many individuals are turning to wearable technology to better understand and improve their sleep patterns. These devices offer insights into the quality and duration of sleep, shedding light on areas that need attention for a more restful night.

Wearable devices equipped with sleep tracking features have gained popularity due to their ability to provide users with detailed information about their sleep cycles. From smartwatches to specialized sleep trackers, these gadgets offer a glimpse into the mysterious realm of our nightly rest. By collecting data on factors such as heart rate, movement, and breathing patterns, wearables can generate comprehensive reports that help users understand their sleep habits. By analyzing sleep stages, including light, deep, and REM sleep, users can identify patterns and trends over time. This information can be instrumental in pinpointing issues such as sleep disturbances, interruptions, or inadequate rest, allowing for targeted interventions to improve sleep quality.

For some people, reviewing their sleep data allows them to work to improve their sleep over time. For individuals with insomnia, anxiety or perfectionism in general, this can be the cause of what sleep doctors are not calling orthosomnia. The obsession with their sleep data in this pursuit of perfect sleep that they can't sleep!

Most trackers aren't even that accurate. Many sleep doctors agree that there's no way that these wearables or mattress devices can tell someone about how much REM sleep they are getting. Some trackers do use heart rate variability as a way to indirectly measure sleep quality but the average user doesn't know how to interpret that data.

To me, the most important measure of sleep quality is how a person feels when they wake up and throughout the day. I can tell the difference between a good and bad night of sleep easily and I'm sure you can too. I do use a wearable during the day to track my steps and heart rate but do not wear it at night. Many of us with insomnia already have enough anxiety around our sleep, we don't need to become fixated on technology!