Experts warn against sleep perfectionism as obsession with hacks grows

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Experts warn that an obsession with sleep can lead to anxiety and unhealthy habits. Photo / 123rf
Online and off, so-called sleepmaxxers are going to extreme lengths in pursuit of better sleep. Is that a problem?

Derek Antosiek considers himself something of a sleep connoisseur. He has applied tape to his mouth,
propped his nostrils open with dilators and sealed his ears with plugs. He has tried out a fan that pumped cool air under his sheets, and positioned separate mattresses for himself and his wife side by side so that her movements wouldn’t disturb him. He has tested light therapy lamps and air quality monitors and sleep trackers and blue light glasses.

With each new experiment, the goal was the same: getting closer to a perfect night’s sleep.
After decades of Americans abiding by the mantra that they can sleep when they’re dead, many have woken up to the importance of a good night’s rest. Overall sleep time has increased over the past two decades, and even more over the past few years, according to the federal Government’s annual survey of how Americans use their time.
“The tide is changing,” said Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the director of a sleep centre at the school. “People – especially Gen Z – have reclaimed their right to a full night of sleep, and they have done that without embarrassment.”
Even though sleep attitudes have shifted, experts say the basic recommendations have stayed the same: at least seven hours, at around the same time, with as few interruptions as possible. What’s different is the number of people for whom sleep has become a fixation. Online, such people – sometimes referred to as “sleepmaxxers” – proudly display the extreme lengths they will go to in pursuit of better sleep.
The videos promise solutions to problems that sleepers never knew they had. One enthusiast recommended an adjustable pillow to reduce facial pressure. Another filmed herself waking up with her hair wrapped in a bonnet and wearing a jaw strap, barely able to speak after taping her mouth shut. She then took it all off in what has become known online as a “morning shed”. Bragging about early bedtimes has become as much of a social media flex as documenting a lavish vacation.
These days, for the sleep-curious, there are mouth tapes (meant to promote breathing through the nose), nostril expanders (which ostensibly reduce snoring), nose tapes (for opening nasal passages) and jaw straps (which wrap around the head and keep the mouth firmly shut). There are pillow mists; magnesium foot sprays; and the “sleepy girl mocktail,” a concoction of cherry juice, prebiotic soda and magnesium powder.
There’s also higher-end technology, like the fan that Antosiek tried, which can retail for close to $600, and entire lines of sleep wearables, some costing almost US$1000 ($1600), that track and measure the quality of people’s sleep. There’s a “sunrise” alarm clock, which its creators claim wakes people up according to their natural circadian rhythms. For the true enthusiasts, there is even a $4049 mattress system that adjusts temperature, detects snoring and vibrates when it’s time to wake up. It will also run you about US$4000 ($6500).
Leading sleep scientists have become swept up in a booming, multibillion-dollar slumber industry. After Walker published the bestselling book Why We Sleep in 2017, the sleep-tracking company Oura brought him on as a medical adviser.
But as interest in sleep has risen, some doctors and academics have noticed people becoming preoccupied with obtaining a perfect night’s rest. In 2017, researchers from Rush Medical College and Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine came up with a word, orthosomnia, to describe people who seek treatment for self-diagnosed sleep issues resulting from their use of sleep trackers and wearables.
In The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, the researchers wrote that they worried about the effects of a “perfectionistic quest for the ideal sleep,” likening what they were seeing to orthorexia, an obsessive fixation with healthy eating.
Not all sleepmaxxers develop orthosomnia, of course. But Milena Pavlova, the medical director of the Sleep Testing Center at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital in Boston, does worry about people becoming too focused on bedtime.
“Sleep is a passive process,” Pavlova said. “It is to be protected, not forced – or ‘maximized.’”
Antosiek, a 31-year-old who lives in Michigan, started to take sleep seriously a few years ago after realising that he never grew out of bad habits he developed in his early 20s, including drinking too much on weekends and staying up late.
Searching for information online, he stumbled upon a small but dedicated community called Sleep Hackers on the message board site Reddit, made up of people who regularly share tips and express frustrations with their own sleep issues.
Soon, Antosiek became a moderator for the forum, and his own habits changed. He started trying to get what he considered to be “the right amount of light at the right times” of the day, and using various sleep gadgets and trackers. One of them was an Oura Ring, a sleep tracker that fit on his finger and provided him with a daily sleep score between zero and 100. The score meant a lot to him. On nights he had trouble falling asleep, he was hard on himself and feared the next morning’s results, knowing they would affect his chances of receiving an “optimal” score of 85 or higher.
For many sleep devotees, their fascination with hacks has remained a harmless hobby. Mayte Myers, 27, who goes to sleep wearing a jaw strap and mouth tape, said the elaborate bedtime ritual gave her something to look forward to. “It honestly feels like a weighted blanket for my face,” she said.
Similarly, Maureen Osei, a 24-year-old from North Carolina, puts on mouth tape, nose tape, a bonnet and a jaw strap before bed.
“It’s kind of like there’s nothing else to do but to fall asleep, because it’s so uncomfortable,” she said. “I’m not going to scroll with my chin strap on, you know?”
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For others, though, focusing on sleep has backfired. Sarah El Kattan, a 26-year-old who lives in Frankfurt, Germany, never thought much about sleep. Then, near the end of 2021, she started to focus on optimising her health after listening to a popular health podcast. She then read Walker’s book, and that focus turned to her sleep. That’s when something like a switch went off in her head, she said. Suddenly, the prospect of going to sleep started to make her anxious, and she began to exhibit physical symptoms.
“It started with heart palpitations,” El Kattan said. The more she thought about sleep, the worse things became. At night, she knew every passing minute was another minute of sleep lost, and her obsessive thoughts created a vicious cycle that kept her awake for even longer.
Walker said he had heard from other people who dealt with sleep issues after reading his book. He suggested that such people should stop focusing on sleep – “don’t listen to my podcast, don’t read the book, don’t do any of that,” Walker said – and instead seek help from a professional.
On the whole, sleep experts say, the new cultural focus on sleep is a welcome change. They did not discount any one hack or gadget outright, so long as people are being safe. “Everything works for someone,” said Leah A. Irish, an associate professor of psychology at North Dakota State University who studies sleep.
The very ritual of preparing for bed by, say, spraying magnesium on your feet may be more important than the effects themselves, a signal to the brain that it’s time to wind down.
But claims that any one tool works are often debatable. Even sleep researchers admit that. “Probably none of these are going to help you get a better night’s sleep,” said Vanessa Hill, a behavioural sleep scientist at the Appleton Institute, a health and well-being research institute at CQUniversity in Australia, who has consulted for the app Samsung Health and the mattress company Purple. “It’s most important that you’re comfortable. So if some of these things help you feel more comfortable, great.”
While small studies have found mouth taping to be beneficial for those with mild sleep apnea, its effect on people who don’t have breathing issues is less understood, and the most rigorous studies found little evidence of magnesium having an effect on sleep quality.
In some cases, there are risks. Mouth tape can actually reduce the amount of oxygen people breathe in if their noses become obstructed, and jaw straps can cause jaw pain, Walker said. For those who have severe sleeping issues, it’s better to see a doctor first.
And viral hacks and new inventions are no replacement for the tried-and-true rules of sleep, such as getting in and out of bed at the same time every day, reducing alcohol consumption and making time to wind down. El Kattan finally started sleeping better, for instance, when she stopped consuming caffeine and practised being kinder to herself.
In Antosiek’s case, the earplugs, mouth tape and nasal dilator have helped him, he said. But the bed fan didn’t do much, and the Oura Ring made things worse. “I found myself waking up and immediately looking at my score, like, ‘Did I get good sleep?’” he said.
With distance, Antosiek can admit now that he probably let things get out of hand. “I became very obsessed, maybe to an unhealthy degree at one point,” he said.
Shyamal Patel, Oura’s senior vice-president of science, said the Oura Ring was not “designed with the idea of maximising engagement,” and suggested that people who find themselves fixating on their sleep data take a break from tracking.
Antosiek went a step further: he decided to stop using the product altogether. He doesn’t think he ever developed orthosomnia, he said, but he can understand how people can take sleep maximisation too far.
These days, if he wakes up feeling rested and alert, that’s good enough for him.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Kate Lindsay
Photographs by: Sean Dong
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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