81
grams. Companies theoretically use all this data to
make their products better for the consumer, but
they also use it for targeted marketing (perhaps
to sell you a new pillow or blanket) or sell it out-
right. Some sleep-wellness companies more benev-
olently share their data with academic institutions
to learn more about what it could mean. Eight Sleep
is working on studies with Mount Sinai, UCSF and
Stanford. Matt Mundt, who founded a company
called Hatch Sleep, which makes a blanket cocoon
sleep pod for adults, says he plans to announce a
partnership with a major medical system to bring
the product into clinical trials.
The sleep-wellness industry is made up of three
categories of products: treatments (prescription
sleep aids, homeopathic remedies, and doctor in-
terventions like surgeries or sleep-apnea-treat-
ment devices), routine disrupters (sleep trackers,
meditation apps, dietary changes and sleep pro-
grams) and nesting (mattresses, pillows, curtains,
humidifiers). Treatments are mainly performed
and monetized by the medical industry and the
hospitality industry (like this sleep retreat). Most
of the buzzy sleep-wellness companies like Eight
Sleep, Oura, Casper and OMI are creating prod-
ucts that fit into the routine disrupter and nesting
categories. Eight Sleep, for example, sells a mat-
tress that regulates its own temperature (nest-
ing) and tracks your sleep to provide personal-
ized coaching (treatment). The brand has raised
$70 million over the past three years, with $40 mil-
lion of that raised in November. Zatarain says the
company plays to the public desire to self-analyze
and self-optimize. “We want people to be ask-
ing themselves, ‘Am I sleep-fit, or not?’ ” she says.
After my first night of delicious, wonder-
ful 97-score sleep, I’m feeling a little cocky. I—I’ve
convinced myself already—am sleep-fit. Suarez
is not so sure. “I bet you tonight you’re going to
do worse,” he says on day two. “You’ll get an 87 or
something.” The data, he says, does not care about
my confidence.
I spend much of my second day at the retreat
thinking about my sleep score. The keys to good
sleep, I’m told, are simple: exercise; eating well;
not drinking too much; a dark, quiet space; creat-
ing a wind-down routine; no screens two hours be-
fore bed; and a comfortable bed. The greatest enemy
of sleep is stress. The main value of the sleep score—
and sleep tracking in general—is not to affect your
sleep, but to tell you when you need to change your
waking habits.
“The biggest win [of sleep tracking] is in the
behavior change,” says Els van der Helm, the co-
founder and CEO of Shleep, which designs custom-
ized sleep programs. Through her company, van der
Helm works to convince companies that employees’
sleep should be prioritized not only because it is good
for them, but also because it will make the company
more profitable. (Shleep itself raised $1.4 million in
venture capital in August 2019.) At her presenta-
tions, van der Helm sees the same behavior again and
again. As she describes easy things employees can do
to improve their sleep, she suggests a wake-up light
alarm. Immediately, everyone grabs their phones
and orders one online. “That’s great, but can they
be as passionate about exercise, or creating a wind-
down routine?” she says. “The issue is that people
love throwing money at the problem and just buy
something and think they’re good. ”
The problems with our sleep—for those who are
otherwise healthy—are often problems we can fix
ourselves. “You don’t need any of that stuff,” Suarez
tells me when I run through the list of products I’ve
tried. “People say, ‘How can I sleep better?’ And my
answer is, ‘How can you have a better life?’”
Making sleep improvement all about what we can
purchase to help us also creates an untrue narrative
around what that data means. In her study on sleep-
tracking habits, Robbins also found a disparity in
who tracks their sleep: the higher a person’s income,
the more likely they were to track their sleep. “A very
concerning aspect of the conversation around sleep
is the message that sleep is a luxury,” Robbins says.
“We need to remove the notion that sleep is a luxury
and replace it with the truth, which is that sleep is
something we all deserve and that unifies us.”
So on my second day at the sleep retreat—yes, a
massive luxury—I do everything right. I think about
my sleep score and forgo a second glass of wine, even
though I’m on vacation. I think about my sleep score
and go to yoga. My body and I deserve it.
That night, I feel terrible getting into bed. I’m
stressed about the amount of work I have to do, and
I keep thinking about how that stress will disrupt my
sleep. Suarez is either a sleep witch who intentionally
cursed me, or someone who knows what he’s talk-
ing about. My money is on the latter. I close my eyes
and open them again only a few hours later, thinking
about my sleep score. Eventually, I get back to sleep
and wake in the morning to a markedly worse 85.
Suarez had warned me that some Type A peo-
ple slept worse on their second night simply be-
cause they knew they were being tracked, but when
Vera reviews my Night 2 results, she says she can
tell what the problem was. The ResMed shows
two scores for each night’s sleep, both calculated
based on your movement in bed: one for your men-
tal sleep and one for your physical. On the second
night, my mental sleep was fine. It was my body
sleep that was a disaster. I needed, Suarez says, to
wear myself out.
So on the third day, I sign up for a cardio class in
the gym after a nice long walk. By the time I begin my
wind-down routine in the evening, I’m already sore.‘We want
people to
be asking
themselves,
“Am I
sleep-fit,
or not?”’Alexandra
Zatarain,
co-founder of
Eight Sleep