Experimenting with tech for sleep has yielded few ZZZs

There is no shortage of advice on how to get better sleep. The National Sleep Foundation, an Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit devoted to waging the battle on behalf of Mr. Sandman, has a website full of tips and tools for children and adults.

The tips are both obvious and mostly things we, as a culture, don’t do very well. How’s your diet? Do you exercise daily? Are your pillows and mattresses comfortable and supportive or cheap and plentiful? Do you have a fixed sleep schedule and relaxing nighttime routine or do you use Twitter? You didn’t drink a grande latte this evening, did you? Are you even taking this seriously? I’m beginning to think you want to have a sleep disorder.

It seems that I’m not alone in Drowsytown. According to the Sleep Foundation, 40 million Americans experience insomnia every year and, in the foundation’s annual “Sleep in America” study, it was revealed that Americans on average get fewer than seven hours of sleep a night during the week. For several years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called lack of sleep a “public health epidemic.”

Being a tech reporter, for the past several years I’ve sought solutions in technology. Whenever a new app or gadget arrived that promised to confront sleep problems with new tech, I jumped at the chance to check it out. Unfortunately, the results have been mostly disappointing. And yes, I recognize the irony in relying on tech products, since in the past few years, it’s been smartphones, slender tablets and the ever-churning empires of Facebook and other social media networks that have kept us awake and overstimulated. I get that.

Here’s what I found.

Sleep via audio suggestion

The first app I ever used to try to get better sleep was called “pzizz,” which first began as a computer program meant to play you programmed soundtracks. You could listen to ambient music or have a relaxing narrator guide you to relaxation, not unlike a form of light hypnotism.

Since then, “pzizz” has shifted its efforts to mobile phones, but has had trouble keeping its products updated for iOS and Android. For now, it’s not available, but the company says on its website it plans to relaunch the apps and is offering free “sleep soundtracks” at pzizz.com.

The soundtracks were relaxing once you got past the New Age vibe, but my biggest problem with “pzizz” was the necessity of wearing headphones or earbuds (so as not to disturb my wife). The audio gear always caused more sleep problems than the insomnia I’d at times try to cure with “pzizz.”

Sleep by unattractive headband

In late 2012, I found a new device at a blogging conference called Zeo Sleep Manager, which combined a headband sensor with an app for your phone. The headband, holding a large piece of plastic that went right on your head, recorded brainwave activity and sent that information to your smartphone. (Which, when I tried it, required the phone to be on and plugged in to work; it was a huge battery drain.)

Zeo used your sleep information to give you a “ZQ Score” and offered tips to correct your sleep behavior.

It was a neat idea that suffered from major hardware design issues. The $99 headband sensor was uncomfortable to wear all night and the sensor was built to wear out in a few months of sweat exposure, at which time it was to be replaced. By the time I got to that point, with data that told me what I already knew (“Get more sleep!”), I was ready to throw the Zeo in a drawer and never see it again.

That must have been a common response. Last year, the company behind Zeo announced it was shutting down and even the website for the product has disappeared.

Sleep by sporty wristband

Earlier this year, I bought a FitBit Force wristband. I was interested in the fitness data (it tracks your activity, such as walking and stair climbing), but was far more interested in sleep data it could collect.

This worked out well for a while, even after the product was recalled for a series of skin rashes. I got no rash, so I held onto the wristband and continued wearing it all the time, activating its sleep monitoring at night and when I took naps.

It was a lot of data beamed wirelessly to my phone and pretty graphics showing me when I got up at night, what hours I was restless and how much sleep I was getting over time. But if I forgot to activate sleep mode, the FitBit wouldn’t remember, and if I forgot to turn it off upon waking, it just kept on recording sleep. I could go in and manually adjust that information in the iPhone app that collects the data, but after a while I stopped bothering.

Wearing a slim, rubber wristband turned out to be a lot less hassle than a big headband sensor, but my tendency to forget that the wristband was recording data began to make the information it was collecting useless.

Wired mattresses

For a few months, my sleep began to deteriorate, even when I was getting to bed at a decent hour. I wondered if the sag in our 10-year-old mattress might be to blame.

I visited a Sleep Number store in South Austin and was thrilled to learn that the company is embracing high-tech and the quantified self data movement for its beds.

The company’s flagship innovation is still the Sleep Number dual-air technology, which allows you to adjust the firmness on either side of the bed separately. Newer models, like the top-of-the-line x12, a bed that starts at $8,000 and whose name sounds more like a fighter jet, can recognize voice commands (think Siri for your bed).

Most Sleep Number beds can communicate with apps from the company that track sleep patterns, a technology called Sleep IQ. There are also bed toppers to make one side of the bed cooler or warmer than the other.

The manager at the South Park Meadows Sleep Number store, Tim Topicz is handsome in a Scott Bakula way and has an easy charm when it comes to discussing America’s sleep problem.

Topicz says that people are more focused on sleep as one of the pillars of health, alongside diet and exercise. “The easiest one to deal with is sleep,” he said. “We are educating people. Even though people are putting a premium on sleep, the most expensive bed or the most expensive technology may not be right for you. If you’re lying awake thinking about how much money you spend, we’ve defeated the purpose.”

Topicz guides me through the Sleep Number process and I emerge with a score of 35, on the soft side of bed firmness. With a slick remote, he adjusts the x12 into the “Zero G” position, elevating my feet and head for maximum relaxation.

He tells me about “Partner Snore,” a way to adjust the bed so that your spouse (or other sleep partner) will stop with the snoring.

It’s very hard not to fall asleep, forget work and drift away right there in the middle of a retail store on a Tuesday morning.

But I’ve got a story to write.

It’s a story about sleep that I’ll end up filing at about 1:30 a.m., because some habits are very hard to break, even with the lure of the best zzz’s money might buy.