Mm-hmm.

And, you know, I think the things that people do that get in the way, you know, they might start out as harmless or they might be things that make tons of sense in the moment.

You know, like I think when people are already in a position where their sleep is really disturbed, you know, they're kind of just on kind of emergency kind of like just survival mode, right? And it's like every night it's about like oh my gosh, like what is going to happen tonight? Like what do I need to do? You know, and it starts really starting putting sleep kind of on this pedestal becomes this very precious thing.

Like I need to be at this place.

I need to be wearing this.

I need to kind of like have the room set up this way.

And that just puts a lot of mental effort and pressure on the system.

What would you suggest? How does that affect sleep and what can we do about it?

[outro jingle] Headspace Studios.

Hello everyone, it's Dr. Eric Prather here with some science-backed ways to help you sleep easier.

Today we're talking about sleep trackers.

I'll tell you how effective they really are and what they can reveal about why we're not getting more restful sleep.

Let's get into it.

Whether it's a ring or a watch or a mattress, most of the consumer-based wearable devices are pretty good at estimating total amount of sleep that someone gets because they are good at detecting wake versus sleep.

They're also pretty good at estimating how fragmented someone's sleep is because if they're wearing them, they're moving around.

Do you think those devices that give us data on sleep, are they helpful? Are they harmful? Are they something in between?

I think they're somewhere in between.

They're often part of the reason that people have become more and more interested in their sleep because we can measure it.

For so long, it was kind of magical, and it still is to, to some extent.

But we are learning a lot.

And at the individual level, people can begin to identify patterns in their sleep that might be meaningful.

You know, you take, you know, wearing a device and the impact of, say, drinking alcohol close to bedtime.

Mm.