What is orthosomnia? How obsession with wearable tech could impact sleep
Millions of Americans are turning to devices to keep track of everything from heart rates to sleep. But the latter could pose a problem for some wearable tech users who end up more stressed than rested when it comes to monitoring things like their sleep score.
Nancy Chen, a marketing manager and part-time boxing instructor, who was drawn to having access to sleep data, told "Good Morning America" that her device became a problem of its own.
"Sleep has always mattered a lot to me, and I would always get a little stressed if I knew I wasn't gonna sleep enough," she said. "It was this cycle of, I knew that my sleep score was gonna be bad, and then I was kind of like stressed about it. It was too much data."
The constant monitoring can lead to a phenomenon known as orthosomnia, defined by the Sleep Foundation as an obsessive pursuit of optimal sleep that is driven by sleep tracker data.
"Orthosomnia refers to individuals for whom tracking may have become or is potentially stressful," sleep scientist Rebecca Robbins, Ph.D., an assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, told "GMA."
"The information they receive stresses them out, and then they it causes them to struggle the next night."
The harder people with orthosomnia try to control their sleep, the worse it gets. While health trackers can have many benefits, they may be triggering for perfectionists or those with Type A personalities, Robbins said.
"The thing about sleep is it's not always going to be perfect every night, and sleep is a function of all of the things that we experience in a typical day -- and some of that might be stressful," she said.
While there are many benefits to health trackers, including understanding one's sleep patterns, if you're experiencing stress from those trackers, Robbins recommends putting it in a drawer and returning to some healthy sleep strategies.
"Unwinding before bedtime, calming your mind, using some breathing activities, journaling before bedtime, a warm shower," she suggested, adding that people should try to be "filling the moments before we want to be falling asleep with healthy, relaxing activities."
