REF-402 · Jahrami H, Trabelsi K, Vitiello MV & BaHammam AS, 2023 · Nature and Science of Sleep, · Paper · PubMed
The tale of orthosomnia: I am so good at sleeping that I can do it with my eyes closed and my fitness tracker on me
Key Results
Editorial without an abstract; the summary below is from the full text and was not checked against an abstract (none is indexed)
"Sleep paradox" concept: monitoring sleep creates stress that worsens sleep
Links orthosomnia to nomophobia (phone separation anxiety) — both involve technology dependence
Consumer sleep tech requires mobile phone access, compounding screen exposure before bed
The paradox: tools designed to improve sleep can systematically degrade it
Calls for validated orthosomnia measurement scales
Mechanism
Proposed by the authors, not tested: sleep monitoring → awareness of "poor" metrics → performance anxiety about sleep → arousal at bedtime → actual sleep disruption → worse metrics → reinforced anxiety. The monitoring tool becomes the stressor.
Practical Application
The very act of tracking sleep quality can paradoxically degrade it — an editorial argument (no original data) that pairs orthosomnia with phone dependence and calls for validated scales
Not from this paper; the base's own practice: athletes prone to data obsession can take periodic tracker-free sleep periods
Not from this paper; the base's own practice: phone in another room at night removes both tracker checking and screen exposure
Not from this paper; the base's own practice: if you check your sleep score before getting out of bed, that is a warning sign of orthosomnia-type preoccupation
Limitations
Editorial, not systematic review
Theoretical framework, no original data
Calls for research rather than providing it
No abstract is indexed, so the content summary could not be checked against one
How this entry was checked and changed
Content correction 2026-09-27
"Practical rule" and the tracker-free / phone-in-another-room advice -> labelled as the base's own practice; they are not in this editorial.
Added the note that the paper has no indexed abstract and the summary is unverified full-text reading.