It has a name. The obsessive desire to have a perfect night’s sleep… even if it means losing sleep is called orthosomnia. Ironically, such sophisticated wearables as the Apple Watch, which now detects disorders like sleep apnea, are to blame.
Posted at 2:23 a.m.
Updated at 5:15 a.m.
Because quite naturally, people who have difficulty sleeping well at night will try to find the cause. Manufacturers of connected watches, bracelets and even rings that are on sale these days have understood that there is a need that the sensors of their connected devices can help fill.
And it works. A study on this subject carried out by the firm Grand View Research calculated earlier this year that 22% of consumers on the planet had in their possession a portable device capable of analyzing the quality of their sleep. The firm predicts that this market will grow by approximately 10% per year by the end of the decade. In 2030, around 40% of adults will have access to biometric data relating to their sleep: heart rate, breathing, level of agitation, depth of sleep, etc.
Sleep apnea
Obviously, this causes manufacturers of connected devices to escalate in terms of functions and versatility. This is partly why Apple announced last week that it was adding a sleep apnea detection feature to the three most recent versions of its Apple Watch.
The affected models are the Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2, all three released within the last 18 months or so.
Apple calculates that 80% of people who suffer from sleep apnea do not realize it. In their case, there is a risk that this may hide other, even more serious health conditions, such as heart disease or type 2 diabetes.
Like many other health conditions that prevent you from sleeping well at night, the severity of apnea varies. Apple makes it clear from the outset: its connected watch does not detect all cases of sleep apnea. In any case, people who think they are suffering from it should consult a doctor even if it is not detected by a connected health accessory.
But it is possible by analyzing the data produced by the sensors of a watch like the Apple Watch to detect cases of apnea with a high level of certainty.
Apple commissioned specialists to carry out clear scientific studies on how its watch could tackle the problem. She then developed a detection tool that won’t alert people if it’s not 100% certain they have sleep apnea.
It was important to do all this work upstream for a very simple reason: to claim that its Apple Watch can detect sleep apnea, Apple had to obtain approval from Health Canada.
This is done.
False positives
There are plenty of other sleep quality indicators that do not require Health Canada approval to be integrated into connected devices. And this is where we come back to orthosomnia: it seems that a growing portion of people who rely on these indicators to analyze the quality of their sleep tend to overinterpret the data obtained.
In other words: if their night’s sleep is not perfect, it worries them. They cause the very problem they are trying to correct.
“A growing number of patients are seeking treatment after self-diagnosing a sleep disorder, such as insomnia, based on data from their tracker indicating that their sleep has been light or interrupted” , write researchers from Northwestern University, in the Chicago area, in a study on orthosomnia and connected health devices.
The correlation that these patients make between the analysis of their connected device and the fatigue felt during the day can transform into “a perfectionist quest for the perfect sleep”, continue the researchers. “For these patients, their tracker sometimes seems more reliable than validated analysis techniques, such as polysomnography and actigraphy. »
It’s quite a puzzle. Because sleep disorders are also a growing scourge. It needs to be tackled, but in the right way. Because if we haven’t yet found a magic cure, we shouldn’t turn an imperfect night’s sleep into an obsession from time to time.
Plans so that you lose… sleep, precisely.
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