{
  "id": 9961420,
  "title": "We Turned Sleep Into Homework. Now We’re Losing Sleep Over It",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/26/we-turned-sleep-into-homework-now-were-losing-sleep-over-it",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-09-26T10:00:06.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Time",
    "slug": "time",
    "url": "https://time.com/article/2026/09/26/we-turned-sleep-into-homework-now-we-re-losing-sleep-over-it/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In recent months, a new patient entered my office, visibly exhausted, complaining about poor sleep. She shared her sleep score of 61 out of 100, a number that reflected her deteriorating sleep quality. This story is all too common. When a person experiences a few bad nights of sleep, constant monitoring can transform a temporary issue into chronic insomnia. Sleep was once an afterthought, until recent decades saw a dramatic shift in attitudes. Thomas Edison once dismissed sleep as \"an absurdity, a bad habit,\" believing his inventions could render it unnecessary. But in recent years, sleep has become a public health concern. Arianna Huffington's collapse and Matthew Walker's best-selling book, Why We Sleep, galvanized public interest in sleep. Wearable devices assigned numerical values to what was once a subjective feeling, and adequate sleep became a symbol of success. This craze evolved into \"sleepmaxxing,\" an extreme optimization of sleep akin to intense exercise. Sleep specialists have coined a term for the unhealthy obsession with achieving perfect sleep: orthosomnia. This condition mirrors its own absurdity. To achieve perfect sleep, one must obsessively monitor their sleep, creating an unhealthy cycle. Orthosomnia does not have a single cause; it often begins with earnest attempts to improve sleep hygiene. These hygiene rules, such as consistent bedtimes and avoiding screens before bed, are not inherently wrong. However, their delivery as rigid checklists rather than flexible guidelines can transform benign habits into a moral failings. Patients may feel shame for seemingly minor deviations, such as watching TV in bed or having a glass of wine before dinner. Yet, these behaviors are not clinically significant; the problem arises when such flexibility is treated as dogma. Sleep hygiene advice, based on general associations between behavior and sleep quality, has become a one-size-fits-all approach, disregarding the fact that everyone's sleep needs are unique. For chronic insomnia, sleep hygiene alone is insufficient. Studies have shown that a brief course of behavioral treatment is far more effective. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine concurred, advising against using sleep hygiene as the sole treatment for chronic insomnia. To address sleep issues, I advise my patients to treat sleep-related lifestyle interventions as a menu rather than a strict checklist. They should experiment with different strategies, discarding those that do not work and refining their approach as their life circumstances change. This personalized approach allows individuals to find what works best for them, rather than forcing a rigid set of rules upon themselves. By embracing a flexible, adaptable mindset, patients can reclaim their sleep, treating it as a dynamic, evolving process rather than an obstacle to master.",
  "summary": "Orthosomnia is an unhealthy preoccupation with achieving perfect sleep that produces the insomnia it was meant to prevent, writes Joshua Tal.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}