In a new series from The Sleep Geek, aka James Wilson, he highlights how more and more people are suffering from Orthosomnia and explains what the condition is and how to play our part in combating it.
I have been a sleep educator and practitioner for quite a while now, and when I started, I was dealing with people struggling to sleep, insomniacs battling to get to sleep, or waking in the night, which hasn’t changed but the reasons why have. Previously people might not have even realised they had a sleep issue, or they didn’t know what to do, they were stuck in their poor sleep and lost.
Some people still suffer sleep issues like this, but the majority of poor sleepers I work with in organisations and sports teams are suffering because they are well aware of the impact of poor sleep on their health, and they are trying everything and anything to get that perfect sleep they think they need to be the best version of themselves.
They are obsessed with sleep perfection, or as it is more alternatively known, orthosomnia. This term was coined in 2017 to describe this obsession with perfect sleep. When first used it was associated with sleep trackers, those inaccurate measuring devices such as Sleep Cycle, Oura, Whoop, Apple Watch et al, which often give unreliable data around our sleep, and prescriptive advice on how to sleep better, but has come to be associated with fads and myths such as, mouth taping, the 5AM club and products and brands that make wild unsubstantiated claims about their products or services. Coincidentally the book Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker (which I am sure many of you have read) magnified the belief that even one night of poor sleep was seriously detrimental to your health and drove the idea that unless we are getting perfect sleep then we are going to die sooner.
So, what can we do as an industry?
We can work towards ensuring our customers are aware of how our products may help people sleep better, to get away from sweeping, glib statements, like ‘This mattress will leave you snoozing perfectly,” linking the attributes of the mattress to a customer’s sleep, for example, by selling a sprung mattress with natural fillings to someone who suffers from night sweats, rather than a mattress with foam, which acts as an insulator and will make the customer hotter, sleeping worse and pretty unhappy. Are you aware of the sleep problems the products you sell might help, and what they may make worse? If not, my Sleep Geek Certified Retail Training might be what you have been looking for. Do you want the nation to be better educated on sleep, and worrying less about how to sleep well? If so, get in touch for a chat.
About the Sleep Geek
James Wilson (AK The Sleep Geek) is a Sleep Educator & Practitioner and founder of kipmate. He has worked with the likes of Zurich, Next, Under Armour and West Ham United helping their people kip better. He offers training and certification for retailers, and a certification scheme for sleep products.
