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Point taken about fixating on numbers, but to do SRT by the book you do at least need to pay some attention to them.
As for being able to live a rich and meaningful life at 20% sleep efficiency – I very much doubt it. That means to get even 4 hours of sleep, you’d be spending 20 hours in bed every day. Not much of a life, that! 🙂
I used a Fitbit exactly once for sleep tracking. On a night where I spent about 9 hours in bed and got about 8 hours of sleep, the Fitbit recorded 11 hours of sleep. That’s why I’ve used it exactly once and never again. 🙂
I have read a study that looked at the accuracy of Fitbit-like sleep trackers, and it concluded that while they are quite sensitive (i.e. if you’re asleep, they will most of the time record that you are asleep), they are not specific (i.e. they will often record that you’re asleep even when you’re awake – which is presumably what happened in my case).
I wouldn’t want to dismiss studies that show a link between chronic insomnia and health issues as readily as you seem to. It seems pretty clear that insufficient sleep (for whatever reason) is bad for your health, and chronic insomnia usually involves insufficient sleep, so it’s reasonable to conclude that chronic insomnia is also bad for your health (absent a plausible explanation of why it isn’t).
The same kind of argument applies to ashtrays and cancer. Sure, ashtrays don’t cause cancer, but their presence in a house usually involves smoking, and so they would be a pretty good predictor of cancer in the people who live there.
I think the simple reason that feeling refreshed most mornings is a goal is that it’s much more pleasant and feels much healthier than not feeling refreshed. I just miss that feeling.
As for what I would do differently, or do that I’m not doing now, the answer is probably not much at all. The chronic mental fatigue I have from insufficient sleep isn’t severe enough (most days) to be debilitating. It just makes daily life feel like more of a chore or an effort than it ought to be – than I know it could be.
I also don’t like unsolved mysteries. A year ago I was waking up in the morning feeling refreshed more often than not. What happened to change that, and can it be fixed? I want to know! 🙂
Still don’t have a clear answer to this, but I’m coming to the conclusion that those articles claiming there are no links between insomnia and serious health issues are probably just talking about acute insomnia, which makes sense. It’s chronic insomnia that – like chronic sleep deprivation – is linked to heart disease, high blood pressure etc.
It is interesting how the experience of insomnia can differ from person to person. How do you feel after a nap (if you can get one)? I’m rarely able to nap, but whenever I have managed one, it has improved my mood quite a bit, even if it didn’t relieve other symptoms.
One other thing I’ve noticed that a night or two (or three) of particularly bad sleep can do is increase my pain sensitivity. My chronic lower back pain feels a whole lot worse than usual in those situations.
I had my eighth and last CBT-I session yesterday, and my therapist reassured me that yes, waking up feeling refreshed most mornings is definitely a reasonable and realistic goal – and I should keep working towards it using all the tools I now have.
The main improvements I’ve seen since I started CBT-I seven weeks ago are that I’m falling asleep quicker upon getting into bed, and my average sleep duration has increased by about 45 minutes to around 6.5 hours. I’m guessing that 6.5 hours just isn’t enough for me to feel refreshed (because in happier sleep times I used to get 7.5-8 hours a night), but on my therapist’s advice I’m considering getting a sleep apnea test just to rule out the possibility of that aggravating factor.
Hi SA234
I’ve been doing CBT-I for a little while now and I have the same problem. My current target sleep window ends at 06:30, but I’ll often wake up for good before then (sometimes well before).
One thing my therapist suggested for this (which I haven’t been able to try yet, so I can’t say whether it works) is to get exposure to sunlight in the late afternoon and early evening. The idea is that it delays melatonin production, and so helps you to sleep later. Anyway, that’s something simple to try if you haven’t already.
