Today's Video Headlines: 02/23/26
For Leah Martin, a 48-year-old attorney and mother, running on three to five hours of sleep felt normal until headaches and fatigue made her realize she wasn’t performing at her best.As a competitive runner, she’d already been using devices like Fitbit and Oura to track fitness and soon found herself fixated on her sleep scores.
“I wanted that 100%,” she said. “I always wanted to be the optimal sleeper. But what got me there sometimes wasn’t healthy.”Over the many years during which Martin describes herself as a “terrible sleeper,” she experimented with her sleep hygiene, including white noise machines, melatonin, teas and other natural sleep aids. She wore an eye mask, got blackout curtains, limited screen time and even tweaked her diet, all in the pursuit of better sleep data.“I do feel like the tracking, unlike other steps to create a positive sleeping environment, was detrimental,” Martin said. “I would check the tracker during wake-up periods, which definitely didn’t help with sleep. I would worry about how much sleep time I was getting, what cycles I was in, or missing.” 'Fit and healthy' dad got cancer diagnosis after brushing off nightly bathroom habit: 'An emotional shock'“We’re spending more time on our phones, and that light exposure diminishes melatonin production,” Dr. Andrea Matsumura, a sleep medicine physician, said. especially common among Gen Zers. Overscheduling and work stress also play roles, as do mental health challenges like anxiety and depression, which frequently disrupt sleep for those with insomnia. And wearable health trackers have made people more aware, and sometimes more anxious, about the length and quality of their rest. “People are simply becoming more attentive because they can now track their sleep,” Dr. Alon Avidan, director of the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center, said. While it may feel intuitive to do everything possible to improve sleep, experts say the pressure to achieve “perfect” rest can become a problem, causing stress that can ultimately lead to more trouble sleeping — a phenomenon known as orthosomnia. A term first coined in 2017 by clinical researcher Kelly Glazer Baron, orthosomnia describes an unhealthy preoccupation with perfecting sleep. Though not a formal psychiatric diagnosis, it can cause increased anxiety, excessive monitoring and rigid bedtime routines, according to Dr. Ashwini Nadkarni, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. The rise of wearable trackers like Oura, Garmin and Whoop has unintentionally fueled that fixation, experts say, causing some users to treat sleep as something to perform. “They often become concerned when their data shows a problem, especially when they compare their results to someone else in the household,” Avidan said.“Sleep is a passive biological process, not a skill to be perfected,” Liz Ross, a clinical psychologist at The Coping Resource Center, said. “When people begin grading or striving to improve nightly sleep scores, it often increases worry and pressure at bedtime.”While anyone can fall for the score-chasing trap, experts say people who already struggle with insomnia are especially vulnerable. “People start treating a wearable like the authority on whether they slept well,” Mollie Eastman, founder of Sleep Is A Skill, said, describing behaviors like checking scores immediately and worrying about REM or deep sleep. “I sometimes found myself canceling plans or skipping a glass of wine just to protect the number. It mostly just gamified which days I decided to wear the ring.”The rumination itself, she notes, becomes counterproductive. The harder someone tries to control sleep, the more they activate the stress response, turning sleep into a problem to solve rather than a natural process. Therapist Hillary Schoninger said people often find that their own sleep doesn’t match device data. That disconnect matters because metrics like sleep stages are among the least accurate on consumer trackers, which can’t directly measure brain activity — meaning users may attach too much meaning to unreliable numbers.Cindy Yan, 28, said she got to a point where she selectively wore her Oura ring when she was being “good” about her sleep.Cindy Yan, a 28-year-old wellness entrepreneur and co-founder of The Protocole, said working in health and longevity made it easy to get swept up in trying every new gadget. “The typical lineup looks something like an Eight Sleep, a Whoop or Oura ring, an Equinox membership, peptides and a stack of supplements,” Yan said. “I jumped on the Oura ring bandwagon.” She began checking her score every morning, and felt validated when the numbers climbed. But life in New York meant busy work hours, social obligations and late nights, which hindered her results. She began wearing the ring selectively on “good” nights and leaving it off when she knew she’d be out late to avoid seeing her numbers drop. “I sometimes found myself canceling plans or skipping a glass of wine just to protect the number,” she said. “It mostly just gamified which days I decided to wear the ring.”“When we shift the focus from ‘winning sleep’ to using the day as a tool for overall health and well-being, tracking can be incredibly helpful,” Mollie Eastman, founder of Sleep Is A Skill, said.For some people, tracking your sleep can be significantly beneficial, especially for those who don’t prioritize sleep hygiene or a regular bedtime routine. But the key to avoiding obsession is to treat the data as a reference point without losing sight of your own biological cues. “When we shift the focus from ‘winning sleep’ to using the day as a tool for overall health and well-being, tracking can be incredibly helpful,” Eastman said. “It can function like a check-engine light. It can flag patterns you might otherwise miss.” Working with a physician who can accurately interpret the data and determine whether anything needs further investigation is also a concern. Clinicians are less concerned with precise measurements of sleep stages or oxygen levels than with overall sleep duration and consistency, according to Avidan. “I like to use these devices to estimate sleep duration and sleep regularity, because that’s the number one issue,” he said.Jackie Sumsky, 33, said she tried to “hack” her tracker, focused more on the numbers than her actual sleep.The best way to use a sleep tracker is to understand its limitations. “Metrics such as sleep stages, efficiency, or awakenings are estimates, not direct measurements, and they naturally fluctuate from night to night,” Ross said. “Human sleep is inherently variable, and that variability is completely normal.” Consumer devices can also lag or show data variability, making nightly scores unreliable. For people with certain sleep conditions, trackers can be especially misleading. Jackie Sumsky, a 33-year-old publicist with a genetic circadian rhythm disorder, found that her Oura ring often misreported her sleep because her schedule falls outside traditional nighttime hours. “My sleep score is deflated even when all the other bars are completely full,” Sumsky said. At one point, she tried to hack the behavior to improve the numbers, only to realize the tracker wasn’t built for nontraditional sleepers and began viewing the data neutrally. For those who find themselves becoming obsessive, things like taking breaks from tracking, focusing on long-term patterns and checking in with how you actually feel before turning to a device for validation can help. Matsumura also recommends ditching wearables altogether and simply journaling sleep habits without the added pressure of constant metrics. “That gives me a much better idea because they’re relying on their own perception.” Schoninger agrees. “There’s a mind-body connection that we’re missing,” she said. “At the end of the day, a device isn’t going to tell you how you feel when you wake up and put your feet on the ground. When we try to force something, that’s usually when it backfires.” For Martin, the mother and lawyer who became fixated on her sleep score, giving up her metrics obsession and focusing instead on simply getting rest made all the difference.Third-party tested and with rave reviews, Cymbiotika Liposomal Sleep Complex uses natural ingredients, including magnesium and L-Theanine, to support relaxation and better sleep.Skip the grogginess. Sports Research Sleep Complex promotes restful and restorative sleep. Made with a blend of magnesium, melatonin and herbs, it’s simple to take and delivers deep rest.For those who aren’t fans of melatonin, we suggest Wondersleep Mushroom Gummies from Plant People. The delicious gummies are made from elderberry and reishi, Corydalis, and GABA to calm your mind and help you rest.Body temperature and sleep are connected. For hot sleepers, we recommend these cooling sheets from Olive + Crate, which are buttery smooth and keep you chill all night long.Welcome to the deep sleep club! The padded silk mask gently hugs the face and blocks out all light. Released after three years of advanced product testing, it offers a cocoon-like experience that users love.The hollow concave design of this cooling pillow offers thermoregulation and pain relief. Tilted at a 15-degree angle, it cradles the head and neck and is supportive to all types of sleepers.How to get TRT in 2026: Your guide to optimizing testosterone levelsGet yourself some premium quality earbuds for just $40 Subway scraps its free sandwich perk just months after relaunch, sparks customer revolt: ‘Cheapskates’I’d go outside, but my heated blanket and I are seriously committed right nowCindy Yan, 28, said she got to a point where she selectively wore her Oura ring when she was being"good" about her sleep.“When we shift the focus from 'winning sleep' to using the day as a tool for overall health and well-being, tracking can be incredibly helpful,” Mollie Eastman, founder of Sleep Is A Skill, said.
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