Sleepmaxxing: Is the pursuit of the perfect night’s rest making us more anxious?
Following years of insomnia and struggling to reach deep sleep, Emilie Lavinia dives into the latest viral wellness trend and discovers it may actually be doing more harm than good
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Your support makes all the difference.If there’s one thing about me that those I know can agree on, it’s that I love my sleep. I haven’t always been very good at sleeping, and for many years I wrestled with insomnia and a chronic lack of deep sleep. Over the past six years, sleep has become an obsession for me and employed a raft of strategies, tools and technologies to improve my relationship with it.
Earlier this year, I stumbled on a whole subgenre of TikTok content dedicated to the practices I’d been carefully researching and honing, so I was pretty thrilled. Sleepmaxxing is the latest viral wellness trend, but unbeknownst to me, I’d been doing it for almost a decade.
However, there were a few things about the trend that concerned me so I decided to take a closer look at my own habits and consult some experts about the practice of sleep optimisation.
What is sleepmaxxing?
According to Dr Harry Jarrett, head of science and research at Heights, a health and wellness brand, sleepmaxxing “is the practice of sleep optimisation, focusing on the quality and quantity of one’s sleep, to improve overall mental and physical wellbeing.
“The trend includes the use of various gadgets, techniques and supplements in an attempt to induce a deeper and longer sleep. In general, many people are combining a number of these techniques to optimise their chances of getting a good night’s sleep, in the hope of achieving specific physical and mental benefits.”
A few years back, my chronic tiredness was interfering with my life. My memory was terrible, I found myself zoning out at work and experiencing heightened anxiety over the smallest things. I also felt like I was getting sick all the time and couldn’t work out why. Through research, I identified my lack of sleep was the problem. My sleeping hours were limited, I was spending most of my time in light sleep and I was waking up all of the time, which meant my body couldn’t recover and I felt as though I had a permanent hangover.
The results of my personal sleepmaxxing journey have been overwhelmingly positive. I no longer suffer from insomnia, I fall asleep quickly and I sleep through the night. But I frequently worry about the quality of my sleep and how much I’m getting. I panic if I’m not able to adhere to my pre-sleep rituals and I’ll check in on the biometric stats from my Oura ring and Whoop band as soon as I wake up. My partner and I will often spend time comparing our sleep scores – romantic, I know.
Like many people who sleepmaxx, I use wearables and smart devices to track how much deep, light and REM sleep I get each night, and I take supplements, sleep drinks and night powders to ensure my body is chock full of the nutrients that will aid better rest. But that’s not all. Over the years I’ve invested in new bed linen and pyjamas made from natural fabrics for skin and hair health – silk pillowcases and new duvets don’t come cheap, I might add.
I’ve also bought myself wrap-around eye masks, ear plugs, sunrise alarm clocks and SAD lamps and subscribed to apps that play soothing bedtime stories, binaural sounds and Solfeggio frequencies. My bedroom is equipped with a smart mattress topper that regulates my temperature and an air purifier that removes toxins and I slather my body in magnesium moisturiser before hopping into bed.
After reading James Nestor’s book Breath, I started mouth-taping and eventually learned how to breathe exclusively through my nose while I slept. And recently, I’ve started using hi-tech devices, including a PEMF mat – sending a pulsed electromagnetic field through the body is not only reported to help with healing by reducing inflammation, but it can also send signals to the brain that improve circadian rhythm and prevent you from waking in the night. I’ve also been wearing an ECG band, which helps me track my brainwaves while I snooze so that when I wake up, I can adjust my habits to improve my sleep latency. Then, of course, there are the more woo-woo practices – mindfulness and meditation, yoga nidra, pillow mists and dream journals. In short, I have done it all.
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But as I’ve watched a slew of sleepmaxxing videos on TikTok, I’ve begun to wonder whether I and all these other people are doing too much. Sleep is natural after all and though daily stresses, anxiety, hormones and a host of other factors can interfere with sleep, if you’re tired enough, you’ll eventually get there.
“Sleep is a passive process that can take care of itself,” explains sleep physiologist Stephanie Romiszewski. “You’re better off enjoying your day, being social, and looking after the things you do have control of – this will lead to better sleep, not worse. Those who try to control their days to make sleep perfect, like cancelling important social time with friends or skipping the gym and passively resting with less outdoor time, will sleep worse.”
I like to think I follow Romiszewski’s advice. I won’t eschew a night out with friends in favour of a few more hours in bed, but I am likely to worry about my sleep score in the morning. Some experts have suggested that sleep tracking can lead to an unhealthy obsession with getting a perfect night’s rest – this is medically referred to as orthosomnia and it’s something our wearables might be driving us to, particularly after watching too many sleepmaxxing videos online.
The dark side of sleepmaxxing
The average age for TikTok users is 24 years old and the majority of sleepmaxxing videos I have watched are made by people in their early twenties. They too were using all the products and techniques I had used to fix my sleep issues, but of course, I couldn’t possibly know to what extent these tools were actually helping the people on my screen. Social media never tells us the whole story.
Dr Jarrett explains that “as with any wellness trend on social media, the majority of information provided to audiences is not scientifically tested and predominantly comes from individuals with no expertise in the healthcare sector. This can lead people to invest time and money in practices that may not work and lead to frustration when the sleep benefits are not achieved.
“Another concerning trend is the use of ingredients that really should only be prescribed and used under the care of a licensed doctor. For example, many influencers suggest the use of melatonin, which is available without prescription in many countries, but not in the UK.”
I wondered whether I might have benefitted from seeing this kind of content years ago when I was in the depths of my sleep struggles, or whether it might have made my anxiety more acute. There seemed to be a competitive edge to many of the videos, a battle over who was doing the most, who had the most sleep aids and who was the most high maintenance sleeper.
One of the risks of comparing your sleep routine to someone else’s is increased anxiety, which, ironically, can keep you awake. There’s also the financial cost of sleep aids and gadgets to consider. These products, while helpful, are not necessarily essential.
My partner and I often joke that my rituals are far too complex, but they have worked for me and I feel healthier as a result. A recent health check-up showed that my biological age is five years younger than my actual age and I genuinely don’t think that would have been possible if I’d not fixed my sleep issues with all the tools and tricks at my disposal. A lack of sleep can age you, while optimal rest is restorative.
Still, I do often wonder if I’m too evangelical about tracking my sleep and using all my various sleep aids and whether people in their twenties should be obsessing as hard over perfecting the art of rest. Improvement is one thing, but perfection is nigh impossible, especially when it comes to something like sleep. The TikTok videos I watched seemed to be projecting an element of snobbery that is so often found in connection to wellness. The idea that if you’re not doing the utmost to better every aspect of fairly mundane bodily functions, you’re failing.
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“Sleep is very individualistic, not everyone has the same sleep needs and what works for one person may not work for another,” explains Dr Jarrett. “For example, research suggests that women experience the urge to sleep earlier than men and sleep 11 minutes more a night than their male counterparts.”
Studies show that we’re all likely to require different amounts of quality sleep at different stages of our lives. People going through puberty and menopause, for example, require more hours of sleep due to their sleep being lower quality as a result of hormonal fluctuations. Shifting hormones can cause night sweats, muscle pains, anxiety dreams and a host of other symptoms that can disturb sleep and break up the natural cycle of rest.
“Sleep naturally goes through variations with the seasons, weeks, and months,” explains Romiszewski. “It’s impossible to control it all, but we can stick to the most influential behaviours and then let go of our need for it to be exactly the same each night – that’s impossible.”
There will always be external influences, like your job, friendships and lifestyle, which can all contribute to how well you’re able to regulate your sleep, so it’s important to remember that no two days will ever be the same. Your sleep score will fluctuate and your needs are probably different to the influencer you’re watching in the latest sleepmaxxing video online.
“If one thing worked for an influencer but didn’t work for you, try not to get frustrated and anxious,” says Dr Jarrett. “The most helpful element of the sleepmaxxing trend is that it encourages people to think about their sleep hygiene and ways to improve their sleep routines, which is crucial for overall physical and mental health. My main piece of advice would be to relax and try new techniques without any pressure on the results. Overthinking this will only lead to a poorer night’s sleep.”
Doing my research and using hi-tech tools and wellness products has helped me to sleep better and without knowing it, I’ve become one of the most dedicated sleepmaxxers out there. However, the rise of orthosomnia and the performative status of “perfect sleep” driven by TikTok trends has made me think twice about the emotions I experience when my Oura tells me to “pay attention” to my rest score. I plan to stick with my sleep habits, after all, I’ve spent years finding the perfect balance, but I’ve vowed not to allow perfectionism to creep in and spoil something that none of us should really waste time overthinking.
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