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Are you so obsessed with the quality of your sleep that you suffer from insomnia? You may be suffering from orthosomnia. This sleep disorder can be accentuated by connected objects.
The best is the enemy of good. This well-known adage of startups in search of efficiency is also applicable to sleep. Indeed, in the age of sleeptech, analysis tools are legion. Applications, smart alarm clocks, connected watches and headphones… everything is measured, timed, calculated. But by dint of wanting to control your sleep, you come to the opposite effect, to the point of losing sleep. Researchers have given it a name: orthosomnia.
Contraction of the Greek word “ortho”, which refers to “right” in French, and “somnus” which means sleep, orthosomnia is the obsessive search for a perfect, restorative night, without nightmares or insomnia. Specialists were inspired by the term orthorexia, which characterizes people who are obsessed with healthy eating.
This addiction to the “perfect night” directly influences the behavior of the orthosomniac throughout the day. According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine in 2017, it can make a person irritable, cause problems with memory and attention. These symptoms appear only when the user is unhappy with the sleep data provided by his connected object.
If the question of the origin of this disorder still needs to be investigated, specialists advise to break away from the results of sleep trackers. Indeed, the latter rarely have scientific or medical validation. If you suffer from it, sleep specialists advise to “go back to basics” and focus on your feelings. Have you slept enough? In a good position? If the sleep disturbances last, you can consult a specialist such as a hypnologist.