You wake up, check your app, and see a low score. Suddenly you feel more tired than you did a minute ago. Sound familiar?
You're not imagining it. Meet orthosomnia.
In 2017, sleep researchers coined the term orthosomnia to describe patients whose efforts to get "perfect" sleep data ended up making their sleep problems worse.1 In other words, trying too hard to sleep well, and constantly checking the numbers to prove it, can backfire.
It's a real concern. Doctors have described patients whose fixation on their sleep data was making their sleep worse.1
What your tracker tells you can actually change how you feel
In a 2018 University of Oxford study, 63 people with insomnia wore a sleep-tracking watch that gave them fake feedback. About half were told they'd slept well, and the rest were told they'd slept badly.
By the evening, those told they'd slept badly rated themselves as less alert and more tired, even though the feedback had nothing to do with how they'd actually slept.2
So what do I do?
Sleep data can be useful. It just shouldn't become something to worry about. That's why Sleepwave doesn't give you a score to stress over. There's no shared standard for sleep scores. Each tracker builds its own formula, and these scores are often defined and calculated differently from one brand to the next.3 That means two apps can give the same night two very different scores.
"When measuring sleep, I just don't think you can measure sleep quality and put it into a single number," says Sleepwave founder Jules Goldberg. "There are too many variables at play."
So we started with what sleep experts agree on: adults need 7 or more hours of sleep a night.4 It's also clear, simple, scientifically-backed and something Sleepwave can measure night after night.
Instead of a score, you set a simple sleep goal of 7+ hours and track your progress over time.
References
- Baron KG, Abbott S, Jao N, Manalo N, Mullen R. Orthosomnia: are some patients taking the quantified self too far? Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. 2017;13(2):351–354. doi:10.5664/jcsm.6472. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.6472
- Gavriloff D, Sheaves B, Juss A, Espie CA, Miller CB, Kyle SD. Sham sleep feedback delivered via actigraphy biases daytime symptom reports in people with insomnia: implications for insomnia disorder and wearable devices. Journal of Sleep Research. 2018;27(6):e12726. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsr.12726
- Chee MWL, Baumert M, Drummond SA, et al. A joint academic-industry data architecture specification of fundamental sleep measures for wearable consumer health trackers. Sleep Medicine. 2026. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389945726005496
- Watson NF, Badr MS, Belenky G, et al. Recommended amount of sleep for a healthy adult: a joint consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. 2015;11(6):591–592. doi:10.5664/jcsm.4758. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.4758
