I spent a decade in darkened sleep labs, watching patients struggle under a tangle of wires, and if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the internet is doing you no favours. Most of the “expert” advice on how to manage sleep anxiety feels like it was written by someone who has never actually stayed awake until 3:00 AM staring at a ceiling fan. They tell you to buy a $300 ring to track your REM cycles or to drink chamomile tea like it’s a magic potion, when in reality, staring at your “sleep score” the moment you wake…

I spent a decade in the dark, watching patients stare at the ceiling of a sleep lab, their bodies vibrating with the sheer, frantic effort of trying to sleep. They’d come to me with every gadget imaginable, desperate to “fix” their wakefulness, as if sleep were a broken appliance you could repair with enough willpower. But there is a fundamental misunderstanding in the way we talk about sleep hygiene; we treat wakefulness like an enemy to be defeated, rather than a physiological state that reacts to our panic. The truth is that many of the most expensive, high-tech “solutions” actually…

I spent my first decade in the NHS sleep clinic watching people tethered to headboxes, staring at monitors while they performed the most exhausting task imaginable: attempting to sleep. There is a specific, frantic kind of desperation in a patient who has tried every magnesium supplement, every weighted blanket, and every expensive app on the market, only to find themselves more wired than ever. They aren’t looking for a new gadget; they are trapped in a cycle of performance anxiety where sleep has become a chore to be conquered. If you are currently obsessing over your wearable’s data or rehearsing…