How often do you check your smartwatch per day? Today, a lot of individuals use different health monitors such as watches, rings, or even mobile applications that track sleep, heart rate, stress, calories, and even blood sugar. Currently, the global market of wearable health trackers keeps growing, driven by the desire of people to stay healthy and live longer (Piwek et al., 2016). At the same time, despite the potential benefits, a lot of researchers started pointing out a problem caused by health monitoring tools. Some people get obsessed with constant control over their bodies and end up being worried more than actually being healthier. They get obsessed with their sleep, ideal glucose levels, or recovery statistics and become anxious instead.
This article explores how the modern biohacking movement can contribute to health anxiety, examines the emerging concept of orthosomnia, and discusses the irony of becoming chronically stressed while trying to maximise health and lifespan.
Understanding the Rise of Biohacking
Biohacking implies a variety of ways of using technology, data, lifestyle modifications, and experiments on oneself to boost one’s cognitive or physical performance. Some popular biohacking practices include tracking sleeping quality, measuring heart rate variability, consuming individual diets, using supplements, and wearing continuous glucose monitors. There are multiple reasons why people turn to biohacking. One of them is the need for self-control. Data about health helps people understand the way they behave and make necessary improvements. Based on the study conducted by Patel et al. (2015), it is clear that the use of wearable technology helps improve physical activity and increases health awareness among users.
However, there is a list of negative outcomes connected with health optimisation when using technology. For example, people can spend their time checking statistics regarding their performance several times a day. Users may consider any deviation from normal as a possible indication of a problem with their body. Even a slight change in sleep quality or heart rate may cause them additional anxiety.
Health anxiety is defined as an unhealthy concern about one’s own health status and developing diseases without enough evidence from a clinical point of view (Abramowitz & Braddock, 2011). In the era of high-tech devices, this problem may become more acute due to the continuous flow of data that needs interpretation by a user. In such a way, the tools aimed at helping people stay healthy might provoke some obsessive behaviour, as people tend to control their state too much and pay less attention to how they really feel.
Orthosomnia: The Obsession With Perfect Sleep
One clear example of health anxiety due to the influence of technology is orthosomnia. This term was coined by researchers studying sleep to refer to an obsession with obtaining perfect sleep based on measurements recorded through the use of wearables (Baron et al., 2017). Individuals suffering from orthosomnia typically find themselves spending considerable amounts of time reviewing reports of their sleep. It could lead to excessive concern about disruptions during the sleep period or feeling anxious due to bad sleep, as measured by the device. In this way, anxiety causes the very problem they seek to avoid.
Sleep is a biological phenomenon, and it occurs most effectively in conditions of relaxation. When a person starts obsessing about obtaining the ideal score, bedtime becomes something of a job performance review. They spend a lot of time making sure that everything is optimal regarding sleep environment, pre-bed rituals, and even sleep position. Failing to achieve good sleep results will result in frustration. It has been proven that consumer sleep trackers are often insufficiently reliable in order to be used in making clinical decisions concerning sleep quality (de Zambotti et al., 2019). Despite this, people have an incredible amount of faith in such evaluations. Even some people feel sleepy when they see their bad score, although they think they slept well before looking at it.
This example shows how strong expectations are capable of influencing human life. This number can determine one’s state of mind and behaviour. Rather than paying attention to their bodily sensations, people become reliant on technologies when it comes to assessing whether they have had sufficient rest. In such a manner, orthosomnia proves how harmful the quest for perfection can be.
Read More: How Sleep Shapes Mental Health: A Psychological Perspective
When Data Creates More Stress Than Health
The human body cannot be considered a device that acts similarly every day. Sleep quality, pulse rates, levels of energy, and numerous other factors may differ. Because of various reasons, including stress related to work, family problems, health, or other factors. Nevertheless, many biohackers aim at finding stability and perfection, perceiving even natural biological variations as something abnormal, which should be fixed right away. Such an attitude may lead to constant stress.
According to Lazarus and Folkman, stress emerges in the context of perceived demands surpassing the individual’s ability to deal with them (1984). The mere process of tracking one’s health may be perceived as an endless assessment of performance.
Excessive tracking of one’s health state may result in increased anxiety levels and decreased quality of life for some people (Fardouly & Vartanian, 2016). The problem does not lie in technology per se but rather in the attitude formed toward it. The accumulation of data could turn into pressure rather than an informative process. This leads to a psychological paradox, since chronic stress is connected to various negative consequences in terms of health. Namely, it may cause sleeping disorders, cardiovascular issues, poor immune system functioning, and mental health conditions (McEwen, 2007). Thus, the stress resulting from striving to achieve optimal health could actually result in unwanted health consequences.
One may worry about how to live longer during several hours daily, while at the same time acting in such a way that causes an increase in the level of stress hormones in their organism.
Finding a Healthier Balance With Technology
The tracking devices themselves are no threat to anyone’s health and well-being. They can help users by guiding them toward healthier lifestyle changes. However, the key is not to allow oneself to become overly judgmental based on what the devices show. Instead, experts say that one must look at trends over longer periods of time because one bad reading is not indicative of any real issues. One need not be concerned if the readings are inconsistent from day to day. Furthermore, technology needs to be backed up by common sense, so when someone feels good, healthy, and alert, his or her poor sleep reading cannot be considered conclusive.
Another protective element includes mental flexibility. Good health does not mean perfection. On the contrary, it means being able to adapt to new conditions and remain balanced in various aspects of one’s life. Giving some leeway to imperfection can alleviate the stress resulting from constant monitoring of oneself.
Those individuals who feel anxious about constantly monitoring their health can benefit from giving themselves occasional breaks. Monitoring less frequently, as well as concentrating on activities that they find pleasant and which contribute to their health (such as exercising, socialising, and sleeping), can help.
Conclusion
Biohacking demonstrates a true passion for improving health and extending lifespan. The information generated by wearable devices and technologies can provide useful knowledge for making behavioural changes. Yet, at the same time, if the process of optimisation becomes an obsession, such technologies can cause health anxiety. The example of orthosomnia shows how preoccupation with achieving excellent sleep score results can harm the natural sleeping cycle and lead to unnecessary stress. Such situations may also occur in connection with glucose monitoring, heart rate tracking, and other measurements related to health status.
It is not the information about health that matters. But rather the value people ascribe to it. Several numbers cannot fully define health. The human organism changes daily, and nothing can fully describe its condition. Thus, the correct approach towards utilising technologies related to health would be using the gathered information as an informational tool, not as something defining people personally.
The biohacking movement teaches us that we should prioritise the quality of life over simply extending it. Namely, it is necessary to remember that sometimes the healthiest step to take would be looking away from the screens.
References +
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