The Case Reports That Named 'Orthosomnia'

This case series introduced a term that has since become standard in sleep medicine: 'orthosomnia', modelled on orthorexia, the unhealthy fixation on eating perfectly. The authors described three patients who came to a sleep clinic convinced something was wrong with their sleep, not because of how they felt during the day, but because of numbers on a consumer sleep tracker. In each case, the patients trusted the device's data over standard clinical assessment, and their pursuit of a better sleep score, extending time in bed, becoming hyper-alert to any tracked disturbance, appeared to be actively worsening their sleep and daytime distress.

With only three patients, this is a case series rather than a study designed to establish how common the problem is, and it can't say what proportion of tracker users this applies to. Its significance lies in being first: it gave clinicians a name and a clinical picture for a pattern that has since been documented far more broadly, and it flagged something that remains true today, that these devices don't measure sleep the way a clinical sleep study does, yet are often trusted more.