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When trying to create a healthy habit, it usually helps to be aware. So it’s easy to understand why sleep-tracking devices, which claim to reveal what happened while users were away from counting, are so popular among those seeking better rest. These will monitor not only whether you have slept, but also the depth and quality of your sleep. They also provide insight into how you should expect to feel the next day.
Most sleep scientists warn that the data recorded by these devices is unreliable, but regardless of whether we can trust the information they provide, focusing too much on the numbers can make people worry about the quality of their sleep. This obsessive approach to optimizing rest that orthosomnia has been invented for only makes things worse. In other words, data overload has kept you awake at night.
There’s another reason to avoid laser-focusing on what happens while the lights are off if you’re hoping to get more shut-eye: You’re missing the bigger picture. Good sleep is fundamental to our long-term health, however, as we explore in our opening special issue “The New Science of Sleep: How to Get Better Sleep No Matter Your Lifestyle”good sleep is not only achieved in the bedroom.
An obsessive approach to optimizing sleep only makes things worse
Take diet, for example. A growing body of evidence suggests that a healthy gut microbiome leads to better sleep and vice versa (see “The Surprising Relationship Between Your Microbiome and Good Sleep”), so if you want to sleep better, what you eat is important.
It would also be trivial for our sleep requirements to be the same or identical to others every night. We are learning more and more that our needs are individual (cf “Why Your Chronotype Is Key to Knowing How Much Sleep You Need”) and variable, due to our age and hormonal fluctuations (see “A better understanding of our hormones and sleep can improve both”).
So while the way you approach actual sleep hours can certainly improve (for personal advice from experts, see “What Nine Sleep Researchers Do to Get the Best Night’s Rest”), all of which suggests that we can ease the pressure to create optimal bedtime conditions and recognize that it’s not just our unconscious hours that define good sleep. What we do during the waking day can also make a big difference.
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