Sleepio conquered my insomnia where quick fix gadgets failed

For so long as I remember, I had trouble falling asleep at night. Like many people, I struggle with intrusive thoughts and find it hard to shut down. Bedtime causes repetitive conversations, worries about my kids, or my big roll of social mistakes and embarrassing glasses. My wake-up call, hungry cats, chirping birds and insistent bladder have played a major role in my insomnia. Whatever the cause, burning the candle at both ends makes me feel stressed, anxious and desperate.

That’s how I came to Sleepio, a six-week digital course that uses cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to overcome sleep problems, developed by Colin Espie, a professor of sleep medicine at Oxford University. Big Health co-founder Peter Hames struggled with chronic insomnia, but found success with CBT techniques after reading one of Espie’s books. The two teamed up to develop Sleepio to provide evidence-based cognitive-behavioral techniques to sleep-deprived masses.

I’m happy to say it worked for me. For the first time in years, I am sleeping regularly for seven hours.

Unfortunate dreams

Too many people receive less than the recommended seven night hours for adults. Sleep disorders come in many forms, but more than a third of adults in the United States suffer from occasional symptoms of insomnia and one in ten has a chronic illness, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Treatment is generally divided into two fields; pharmacological or the aforementioned CBT.

“Some clinical trials have compared the two and the results are really amazing,” says Rebecca Robbins, a sleep scientist in the Division of Sleep Disorders and Circadians at Brigham and Women Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “We see that the behavioral component works as well, if not better, than drug treatment.”

Drugs have side effects and often mask the symptoms instead of addressing the root of the problem. Anecdotally, the medication leaves me feeling unpleasantly unpleasant in the morning and recently because of the quality of my writing. Both the National Institute for Excellence in Health and Care and the American College of Physicians now prefer non-pharmacological therapies, including behavioral therapies, as the first line of treatment for insomnia.

I have also tried several sleeping devices and apps that promise to close the night without much success. It’s hard to understand what will work and how to choose with such a baffling set of options.

“The market can be kind of wild west, because not everything has been developed considering the scientific literature,” Robbins says. “To analyze noise as a consumer, look at the products and see if they have been tested in a clinical trial or if they have been developed in collaboration with anyone with training in sleep sciences or sleep medicine.”

Sleepio success

One of Espie’s conditions when agreeing to help develop Sleepio was a placebo-controlled randomized trial, like this one, to test the effectiveness and safety of the software before release. In 12 trials, with more than 9,000 participants, Sleepio was shown to help you fall asleep 54 percent faster, spend 62 percent less time waking up at night, and have 45 percent better functioning sleep. the next day.