Ottawa consultant warns obsession with wearable sleep scores—dubbed orthosomnia—can wreck rest. Experts urge weekly trend checks and basic sleep‑hygiene habits.
Expert Raises Alarm in Ottawa
Sleep consultant Andrew Holmes of Sleep Efficiency said this week that growing numbers of clients can’t drift off because they fear a low “sleep score” from their trackers. His warning came during a Thursday briefing in the capital, where he called orthosomnia “a disorder we’re creating in our own bedrooms.”
Obsession Coined ‘Orthosomnia’
The term describes an unhealthy fixation on achieving perfect, data‑defined rest. Researchers define it as wake‑time or insomnia driven by anxiety over wearable metrics rather than by medical sleep disorders.
Wearables Boom Heightens Risk
Canadians now buy millions of smart rings and watches each year, placing sleep‑tracking devices on more wrists than ever. Analysts link the 2025 sales spike to marketing that promotes nightly “scores” as the key to health, inadvertently seeding new sleep worries.
Numbers Trigger Anxiety Loop
Holmes says users who check their score before getting out of bed often feel stressed, spend longer in bed to chase higher ratings, and end up sleeping less efficiently—a classic negative feedback loop. Common red flags include morning score‑checking, day‑long fatigue “predicted” by an app, and drastic, unhelpful changes to bedtime routines.
Tracking Accuracy Under Review
Single‑night readings can miss the mark: studies place night‑by‑night accuracy near 75 %, while week‑long averages rise to roughly 80 %. Experts add that consumer devices still struggle to label deep or REM sleep precisely, so over‑interpreting the graphs can backfire.
Back‑to‑Basics Sleep Hygiene
Holmes advises treating trackers as rough guides rather than daily report cards. His prescription: stick to regular bed‑ and wake‑times, get daylight exposure, exercise, and review data only in weekly or monthly batches. “There’s no substitute,” he noted, “for natural sleep supported by simple, consistent habits.
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