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From High-Tech Sleep Gadgets To Low-Tech Pillows

This article is more than 5 years old.

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I might have driven my friend mental with questions about pillow sizes, pillow firmness, and “Have you ever used…?” inquiries the other day as I struggled to find a pillow that was firmer.  In fact, it took many months of sleeping badly on a pillow that was too soft plus my six-year-old daughter telling me last week, “Mummy, I don’t like these pillows,” for me to realize that I hated my pillow.  What’s worse, so many quality pillows sold today are either in stores far away from where I live or they are available readily online. I cannot even begin to explain the impossibility of that process. What does medium/firm really mean?

This struggle to find the perfect pillow made me realize that our current culture of high-tech gadgetry which includes sleep apps, bedtime story apps, sleep meditation headbands and sleep tracking apps, among many others, is simply insufficient. We are looking for high-tech solutions to sleep issues when the basic problems of sleep is not necessarily going to be solved by buying gel-filled pillows, weighted blankets or specialty mattresses, but the solutions are going to come in a more concrete approach to the forces that affect our sleep patterns such as work hours, stress levels, and even low tech solutions such as a firmer mattress or pillow. 

Even Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor of the The Huffington Post, even wrote a book about this issue in The Sleep Revolution (2017) wherein she goes into depth investigating the sleep industry, the science of sleep and sleep disorders. She even relates this to her own life and stating that she did not become successful until she learned to sleep properly. But is this issue of lack of sleep which is clearly affected by the modern stresses of work, online culture, and stress-specific to certain cultures over others?

Philips has conducted annual online sleep surveys in conjunction with Harris Poll examining attitudes towards sleep as well as cultural sleep practices of over 15,000 adults across 13 countries. In its survey last year, Philips shows that 77% of adults have worked on improving their sleep while 35% of the respondents have used soothing music to lull them into sleep. In its 2017 survey, it was discovered that 82% of adults across the planet experience negative impacts following only one bad night’s sleep. The countries most affected by a bad night’s sleep were France (87%) and Japan (86%) with being less productive and feeling unmotivated being given as some of the most important effects of bad sleep.

Most stunning about the 2017 study, however, is how many countries pivoted family time for a good night’s sleep: 53% of adults in France and 46% of adults in the U.S. claimed that time with family is more important than a good night’s sleep. So clearly, we are seeing issues of bad sleep that have absolutely nothing to do with the soft pillow or lumpy mattress. We are also seeing correlations between highly modernized societies and negative health impacts related to the lack of sleep.

Science shows how sleep deprivation can increase anxiety and that sleep is integral to good health. Inadequate sleep is associated with numerous health problems to include the increased risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity and diabetes. This in addition to a far higher risk of car accidents or accidents at work where heavy machinery is involved. Yet, our societies are replete with the situation of work stress and overwork being increased, not reduced.

We even give social perks to those who go on about being so stressed and busy at work that they have no time to take lunch. Bizarrely North American culture views this as “good” where in countries like Italy or France, missing a meal is not a sign of progress. Why, then, would under-sleeping be viewed as a symbol of one’s “success” while conterminously an alarm for health outcomes?

Some companies are getting it right and even sending their employees on courses which show them how to get a good night’s sleep. Others like The Outside View, a London-based predictive analytics company, require that their employees to take part in an experiment of using apps to monitor their entire lives. Still, companies are not doing enough as studies show the devastating effects on business and the economy such as this cross-country analysis which shows how among the five OECD nations insufficient sleep can impact “up to $680 billion of economic output every year.”

So here’s the challenge for the coming yeas as many countries are discussing a shorter work week as sleep deprivation adversely affects individuals’ health and wellbeing: Instead of creating costly losses which amount to local economic losses, why not make it a priority to address the low-tech solutions for sleep deprivation? If we address the causes of sleep loss, we will be doing far more than simply invoking high-tech solutions which largely are only addressing the symptoms and not the causes.

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