Why You Should Get Rid of Your Sleep Tracking Device
If you wear a sleep and fitness tracker, you probably love it and can't be parted from it.
How comforting to know that your Apple Watch or Fitbit is checking up on you, even as you sleep. You can find out if you are getting enough sleep, and to what degree.
But what if the results were not only inaccurate but if the devices themselves were harmful?
Sleep trackers are inaccurate
Sleep trackers sense movement and heart rate. These inputs are translated into estimates of how much sleep you are getting and which phase of sleep.
The sleep tracker is simply telling you when you are not moving and your heart rate is low. So you could be reacting to a dream with an elevated heart rate, and the sleep tracker may count that as awake time. If you are quietly resting, but not asleep, the tracker may count this as sleep.
Some trackers claim to identify phases of sleep. However, heart rate and movement are poor indicators of sleep phase.
When sleep is tracked in a laboratory through a polysomnograph, the actual brainwaves, with signature sleep patterns, are tracked. These pick up stages of sleep. Sleep trackers, on the other hand are completely inaccurate with regard to sleep stages, as what is being sensed is not a direct indication of sleep stage.
Sleep trackers emit EMFs
A growing body of research shows that the barrage of electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs) from technology is disrupting our natural systems and contributing to chronic disease. You can protect yourself by limiting exposure.
When you wear a tracking device 24/7, especially right next to your skin, you are maximizing exposure to the EMFs emitted from your device.
Sleep trackers can lead to obsession and anxiety
Let's say you go to sleep and wake up feeling great. But your sleep tracker announces that you had 18% deep sleep, rather than the ideal 20%. You then fret about how to optimize your sleep and what could be going wrong.
Over time, you start to think there is something wrong with your body. This anxiety, in itself can lead to deterioration of sleep. There is even a new name for this phenomenon; "orthosomnia": trying to get perfect, idealized sleep.
Too much data about yourself may cause you to focus on numbers, rather than how you actually feel. You may think there is something wrong based on some (probably inaccurate) numbers on a screen. Or you may think you have to live up to an ideal based on aggregated statistics, rather than your own unique body.
What if we just trusted our bodies, instead?
Our bodies know how to run the show.
When things go wrong, we can rely on our subjective feelings to tell us so.
A sense of fatigue, hints of pain, unusual symptoms tell us we are off-course. A sense of aliveness and energy tells us that we are on track. We already have a built-in feedback loop.
All we have to do is tune in and listen.