Lisa Holland suffered from sleep deprivation for several years
Have you ever lay in bed at night without thinking about sleep while thoughts circled around your head?
If so, then the plight of Lisa Holland, from Chesterfield in Derbyshire, could strike a chord.
“I just stopped sleeping,” she says. Her insomnia had worsened to the point where she was only able to sleep a few hours a night.
Things came to a head in the early hours of a particularly bad night in 2016.
The sleepless hours passed as the morning loomed a 90-minute freeway drive to Ms. Holland’s senior position in the live events industry – a potentially perilous journey for someone suffering from sleep deprivation.
“I was just walking around in my bedroom,” says Lisa. “I caught myself in the reflection and I just looked like a zombie just walking in circles. And I thought… what are you doing? That’s ridiculous.”
Lisa’s experience is becoming more and more common.
Almost three quarters of people in the UK (71%) are not getting the recommended 7-9 hours of sleep a night, according to a study by insurance group Direct Line last year. It turned out that one in seven got less than five hours.
Could an increased use of apps and other technologies designed to help us fall asleep be the solution? Many of us seem to think so.
Overall, the global sleep tech sector was worth $15bn (£12.4bn) last year. The same report predicts it will rise to $67 billion by 2030.
Sleep problems can be caused by a variety of factors, including stress, shift work, and caffeine or alcohol consumption. If you’re part of the “insomnia army,” you might be reading this through a veil of tiredness, mental fog, or — hopefully not — grumpyness.
But the consequences of persistent insomnia can be much more serious.
According to the UK Health Security Agency (formerly Public Health England), lack of sleep plays a role in high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and even mental health problems.
Lack of sleep can cause numerous health problems
And that has an impact on the economy. A report says sleep deprivation is costing Britain up to £40 billion a year in lost productivity.
It’s not just a British problem, of course. A third of Americans aren’t getting enough sleep, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who say the situation is threatening the nation’s health.
But of course Lisa didn’t think of any of that when she was forced to face her problem. All she knew was that she needed help.
Her doctor first prescribed her a short series of sleeping pills – each of which made her pass out for a few hours but did not guarantee a good rest.
Eventually, she discovered the phenomenon of sleep stories — which are soothing stories delivered through apps and podcasts. She chose the ones on the Calm meditation app and website.
“I sleep so much better now,” she says. “Even if I have a lot to do professionally and think about different things – for example what I have to do tomorrow,” she says. “I think it’s a comfort blanket.”
So she usually opens the app on her cell phone in the evening, selects a bedtime story and plays it through the loudspeaker.
“I think it’s the tone of the voices, how they slow down their voice and leave longer pauses between sentences,” she says. “I think it does something to your thinking and hearing brain.”
More and more of us who have trouble falling asleep are turning to technology for help, and it’s not just about soothing bedtime stories.
The emerging sleep technology market includes devices to track our sleep patterns, apps that enable restorative mediation, and services to treat medical disorders such as sleep apnea or narcolepsy.
This technology is now recommended by health authorities. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, part of NHS England, last year recommended people suffering from insomnia try an app called Sleepio.
Sleepio has a virtual sleep assistant called “The Prof”. Powered by AI software, it aims to help users fall asleep more easily.
The Calm website has plenty of tools that try to help users fall asleep
But despite the benefits of all this technology, according to Lisa, there can be a downside to using your device in the middle of a sleepless night.
“You have to pick up your phone, open the app – and if you forgot to turn the brightness down, it’s like the Blackpool illuminations,” she says.
“And then of course you scroll. You can wake up a little. So I set my favorites so I can switch between stories as quickly as possible and hang up the phone right away.”
Sleep expert Alison Francis is also concerned with the potentially stimulating effect of technology. “The whole idea of giving the mind a break from technology and turning the technology off is dead,” she says.
Her advice is that people should try to learn from technology so that eventually they can sleep without it. “That way you can be more independent and not have to be on the phone all the time,” she says.
Additionally, she adds, some people need a more medically-based approach that includes personal monitoring and a tailored therapy program.
Headspace is an app that aims to help users increase their mental well-being through meditation. Leslie Witt, chief product and design officer, says it has a very strong focus on helping people improve their sleep.
“We realized that we couldn’t address the issue of promoting mental well-being without addressing the issue of improving sleep,” she says. “Over a third of our members use our sleep content and are known as Sleep First members – engaging with the app primarily through our sleep stories, our sleep courses and our sleep music.”
That number is said to increase to 40-50% when people come to Headspace through a workplace program.
New tech economy
New Tech Economy is a series exploring how technological innovation will shape the emerging economic landscape.
“Workplaces see that sleep is crucial,” adds Ms. Witt. “But progress needs to be made to get bosses to recognize how the demands of a global workforce can increase sleep-disrupting stress levels.”
Meanwhile, Lisa Holland thinks it’s time to recognize the importance of sleep to our overall health — and move away from the “always-on” culture.
“If I had the best intentions, getting up at 4 a.m., exercising and then starting the day and being the first to work and the last to leave, that just wouldn’t work for me,” she says.
“I think more and more people are realizing that you don’t have to work 17 to 18 hours a day. I need a work-life balance and part of that is really good sleep.”
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