Deranged. Dysfunctional. Unwell. The words tumble out of my mouth like some haiku for the miserable as I sit in the Connecticut office of Andrew Tucker, Ph.D., for the first time. A clinical psychologist specializing in sleep disorders, Tucker knows an insomniac when he sees one: I am ashen and shadowed, like a real-life manifestation of an Egon Schiele painting.
I had problems long before online shopping and Succession marathons conspired to compromise my precious evening unwind time. But lately, due to ceaseless travel and an uptick in anxiety, shut-eye all but eluded me. I had rotated through a rogue’s pharmacy of antihistamines, cannabinoids, sleeping pills, and teas; I even tried meditation apps, desperate to be knocked out for the night. Nothing worked. “This is science,” Tucker reassures me. “No sleep issue is insurmountable, including yours.”
We, as a society, have reached peak exhaustion. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that one in three Americans suffers from sleep deprivation, making it a veritable public-health crisis. Declining work productivity and traffic accidents are all on the rise, while studies link inadequate sleep to Alzheimer’s, hypertension, depression, and diabetes. Along with good eating habits and exercise, sleep is critical for the optimal functioning of our biological systems, says Fariha Abbasi-Feinberg, M.D., the medical director of sleep medicine at Millennium Physician Group
in Fort Myers, Florida. “It is one of the three pillars of health, and the ultimate necessity,” she continues. But the lack of it and longing for it have made it the ultimate luxury in our maxed-out culture. “Sleep is the most valued commodity there is, and you can’t buy it,” confirms Sara Ivanhoe, M.A., the director of yoga programs at the University of Southern California, where she teaches a course on sleep. “If it evades you, it is impossible to enjoy almost anything.”
It’s an affliction Veronica Lee was so familiar with, she left the financial tech company she was building in Silicon Valley to create a new one devoted to alleviating insomnia. Combining naturopathy, Chinese herbs, vitamins, and algorithms, Lee’s start-up, Remrise, aims to match you with a personalized supplement regimen via an online questionnaire. “I wanted to reinvent the idea of a sleep aid,” the 37-year-old says
of the platform, which was incubated at Atomic start-up studio and has already secured $8.2 million in funding. Other innovators are hoping to capitalize on the movement toward better sleep by rethinking what a healthy night’s slumber looks like, no NyQuil or Ambien required. The company Eight Sleep, beloved by athletes and trainers, has been bankrolled to the tune of $65 million, helping to popularize its temperature-controlled mattress. Embedded with sensors that track your biometrics, the system was designed in the pursuit of what cofounder Alexandra Zatarain, 30, calls “sleep fitness.” Innumerable hotels—including Equinox’s new lifestyle concept—have caught on to the idea, offering sleep coaching as part of their wellness menus. Meanwhile, a new weighted blanket from the Hungarian brand Corala is filled with glass beads that purport to swaddle you to sleep; I recently tried it while sheathed in an oversize silk sleep mask from the Danish brand The Beauty Sleeper and an Italian cotton nightgown from Emilia Wickstead’s new sleepwear collection.