In pursuit of a decent night’s sleep, I have tried various methods, among them warm baths, long walks, hot drinks, giving up caffeine, yoga, acupuncture, nightcaps, sobriety, open windows, closed windows and Advil PM, bought in bulk from American pharmacies.
Some help, but few succeed entirely; still sleep eludes me, for weeks at a time.
Sleep health – the category covering everything from medication to mattresses – is a colossal industry. A 2017 report by McKinsey found it was worth $30bn-$40bn (£23bn-31bn) and growing 8% each year, spurred on by consumers’ exhaustion and fear of developing cancer, obesity and dementia, all of which have been linked to inadequate sleep.
Among the more recent developments for insomniacs has been a flurry of mobile phone apps that claim to help lull us to sleep with specially designed combinations of nature sounds, white noise, hypnotherapy and music.
Dr Neil Stanley, who has more than 36 years’ experience in sleep research and is the author of How to Sleep Well, has his reservations. “Anyone can write a sleep app without any knowledge of sleep,” he says. “The problem is there is no validity for any of these apps to show they work, so the public can’t judge whether they are any good.” There are exceptions, he adds, such as those that rely on cognitive behavioural therapy. “Some do work. And some work only for certain people. But some are just patent nonsense.”
Stanley says the three essential ingredients for good sleep are a dark, quiet, comfortable place; a relaxed body and a quiet mind. “It doesn’t matter what gets you a quiet mind – camomile tea, yoga, listening to Pink Floyd really loudly – as long as you enjoy it.”
The problem, he says, is that we are looking to technology to help us sleep, “rather than doing the obvious things”. Six per cent of us spend less than £100 on a bed, he says; 60% spend less than £700. Meanwhile, the first robot sleep-aid will launch next year – for £500. “I’d spend that £500 on a better bed,” he sighs. “We forget common sense and replace it with an app.”
Earlier this autumn, I began trying a number of these apps, approaching them as any other weary consumer might. (It should be noted that most apps say they should be used for at least three weeks for maximum effectiveness.)
The first I try is Clementine, an app developed specifically for women by Kim Parker after she developed severe anxiety while pregnant and newly promoted at work. Working with a hypnotherapist and a sleep expert, Parker devised a series of meditations and mantras to aid sleep, stress and confidence. Clementine now has 30,000 users, mainly female, since launching a year ago.
“We think women are particularly affected by sleep problems,” says Annie Ridout, Parker’s colleague. “We’re more stressed, more prone to hormonal fluctuations, we’re more likely to worry about domestic concerns, and if we’re mothers, we’re more likely to be doing the night feeds.”
I opt for Clementine’s 25-minute Deep Sleep, which promises to “clear your mental desktop” with optional music. The first night I select music, which sounds like a whale moving through space, as a narrator speaks slowly about the thoughts that are dancing around in my head, breathing them out and putting them in a box by my bed.
I’m sure some might be reassured by this, but I find it oddly unsettling, as if I am being posed a complex philosophical problem at bedtime. I begin to dwell on the box. What does it look like? Who put it there and how do I empty it?
A few nights after Clementine, I try Digipill, which supposedly uses “psychoacoustics”, dispensed as “digital pills”, to unlock the subconscious. The pill for deep sleep begins with a piano refrain, then a man’s voice talking about a place where it is perpetually twilight and we are being cradled softly to sleep.
“The night time is calling you, beckoning you … to give in to its gentle caress,” he tells me. I spend some time trying to place his accent, which is vaguely Irish, yet also Scandinavian.
It is a strange thing to listen to a voice in the dark. You hear its every angle, rasp and turn. Over the course of the past few weeks there have been several sleep app voices floating around my bedroom, as if I have embarked on a peculiarly disembodied Tinder frenzy.
Relax Melodies forgoes the voices in favour of letting you create your own sleep-inducing soundscape from a “menu”: pink noise, brown noise, purring cats, loons’ calls, truck engines, monk chants and the specific type of rain that falls in a cavern.
It is a process of trial and error. I start with a nice burry mix of cicadas, and blend it with thunder and rain. After a while rain makes me worry I want the bathroom, so I add “campfire”, which sparks subconscious safety concerns, so I return to just thunder and cicadas. The cicadas start to sound very loud.
Through the White Noise app, I discover that some people are soothed by the sound of hairdryers, air filters and aeroplane cabins and that I am not among them. For several nights, I attempt to sleep to the sound of a tumble dryer, pink noise and, yes, a vacuum cleaner, but it makes my skin feel itchy.
Another app named Slumber offers stories to guide you to sleep, which sounds charming. I choose The Cat’s Journey, about a cat’s adventure from hearth through woodlands in winter, set to some drifty music and appropriate sound effects. I become distracted by certain illogical details: the persistent sound of a trickling stream in the snowy woods; how the season begins to change from winter to spring. I start to worry about the cat, apparently now walking for weeks – surely it must be hungry by now.
Eventually, I try Sleep With Me – not an app, strictly speaking, but a podcast drawing on the ancient art of bedtime storytelling. Creator and host Drew Ackerman tells me that sleep apps’ noise “buffet” can be distracting for “a particular personality that overthinks or tends to ruminate”, while Sleep With Me aims for the somnolent effect of a poor conversationalist.
The stories are inspired, he says, by “things I’m worried about, strange behaviours on the bus, going for a walk and seeing a bird, my dog’s behaviour …”, and delivered in an unrelenting monotone. “Almost anything can be a story if you make it sleepy,” he says. “You know it’s going to be meandering, it’s going to be boring, it’s going to go on tangents. Sometimes, I put on an index card: ‘Go slow’, ‘go easy’, ‘steady relaxing pace’, ‘pause’.” Most people fall asleep in the first 10 minutes, he adds.
I would like to tell you about the stories I listened to, but I cannot: of all the methods I tried, Sleep With Me was the most successful. Something about the gentle premise, the stories and their rambling telling meant I never once stopped to wonder how it was made or if it was working.
It is also possible I have been exhausted, after all those nights being kept awake by sleep apps.
