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Show HN: I made an app to help insomniacs learn how to sleep again

94 points by dredev 4y ago

Hi HN! I suffered from chronic insomnia for over a year and tried everything from cutting coffee, blocking blue light, to taking melatonin and antihistamine, but couldn’t find anything that worked. I even bought a $500 research-grade EEG device to track my sleep, which was honestly kind of depressing because it showed that I was sleeping less than 4 hours per night for weeks straight. In the day, it took an immense amount of energy for me to perform even the most mundane of tasks, such as doing my laundry or ordering groceries. At night, I felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness and resentment as I lay in bed wide-awake, reading and re-reading Sleep by Murakami or mindlessly scrolling through reddit/ HN. My performance at work suffered, my personal relationships suffered, and my happiness suffered. When I finally decided to see a sleep specialist, I was put on a 3-month long waiting list. Eventually, I was able to get my insomnia treated, but I realized that there is no reason why anyone should wait 3 months to get treatment when the same therapy that I received can be delivered online. My co-founder and I both have experience in digital health, so we decided to partner with sleep experts to create a mobile app to help people with insomnia get better sleep using psychology. We launched in February this year, and have already helped over 500 patients improve their sleep permanently. Our data shows that our program is just as effective as group, in-person sleep therapy, and we’re doing a clinical study with Brigham and Women’s hospital and Harvard Medical School to prove the efficacy of our product. On average, our users sleep 74 minutes longer than before and spend 52% less time awake in the middle of the night. If you have trouble with sleep, try our app and let us know what you think!

noone_youknow 4y ago
How is this even a “show HN”? Literally just a thinly disguised money/data grab. Nope.
conartist 4y ago
Love seeing people recognise a problem (the time it takes to wait to see a specialist) and then solve it themselves. I'm interested what you used to build this?
- dredev 4y ago
  Glad that this resonates with you! The long waiting time it takes to see a specialist is exactly why we decided to build this app. My primary care doctor actually told me that he was often forced to choose between putting his patients with insomnia on months-long waiting list to see a therapist (which is the recommended first line treatment) and prescribing sleeping pills, and neither is desirable. Many of the sleep therapists we worked with to develop the program have also told us that they are so backed up with requests for sleep help, especially during COVID. We used Flutter for the mobile app, and it's Django in the backend with Postgres as our database. Our infrastructure is hosted on GCP. This is actually my first time building on flutter and was pleasantly surprised by how solid the developer experience was. I was choosing between react native and flutter, but had a terrible experience with react native for one of my projects back in college, so decided to give flutter a try.
mrwnmonm 4y ago
This is one of the worst sites I have ever been on. That survey is tooooo much. And marketing messages during the survey? Seriously? Disgusting.
- dredev 4y ago
  Hi! Thanks for your feedback! We were partly inspired by Noom (https://www.noom.com/ https://www.noom.com/) and the success they have with longer surveys and embedding marketing messages in the interstitial. That being said, we're still iterating and learning. I think the hardest part for us is striking a balance between keeping the survey short but still informative so that it is useful to our users.
  - shellfishgene 4y ago
    Maybe you should mention above that you optimize your app mainly towards making profit, not helping people sleep.
  - muzani 4y ago
    Normally I avoid sites like Noom for life, even after they get rid of the surveys. This has some kind of neurolinguistic programming/hypnotism feel where someone is trying to nonconsensually take your money. It's like a salesman asking you if you have problems, and they're always trying to reinforce in your mind that you have problems that go away once you give them the money. It just feels really creepy and dirty. With CBT, the user putting a lot of trust in the app and this feels like a violation of the trust before anything starts.
    - dgiol 4y ago
      *With CBT, the user putting a lot of trust in the app and this feels like a violation of the trust before anything starts.* My exact feeling here.
  - lxe 4y ago
    This trend is the worst thing in apps. Stop it. Just show me what you offer and how much it is. Your users are smart and they want a solution to a problem. Don’t treat them like they are stupid.
ampham 4y ago
What’s the price of the subscription?
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- dredev 4y ago
  We offer a 7-day free trial after which we charge about $45 per month. In comparison, seeing an in-person treatment specialist costs about $150-200 per session without insurance, or $25-$50 per session with insurance. Typically, you would see an in-person specialist every week or every other week.
  - powmonk 4y ago
    You aren't competing against in person therapy though, you're an app. This is an insane leap of logic. I wish you luck but I don't see it happening for your at these rates.
    - dredev 4y ago
      Hi there, you're right that we're not competing against in-person therapy and many patients might prefer having an actual specialist to talk to. That being said, our program works for over 80% of our users and we're just as effective as in-person treatment. We're also running a clinical study with Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital to prove the efficacy of our program. We understand that not everyone can afford our program. Please email us at hello@slumber.one if you have difficulty paying for our program and we can find something that works for you!
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  - ampham 4y ago
    Thanks! I would’ve liked to see this up front before filling out a really long survey so I could see if it’s something I can budget for after the free trial.
wnolens 4y ago
$131.81 per 3 months with current sale price. $188.30 otherwise Feels steep for a CBT app where I gotta do all the work! I sleep quite poorly, but I got to the checkout screen and.. nah. No doubt I'd drop that cash in an instant to sleep better. But I have little trust in filling out prompts and listening to rain sounds. What has worked quite well for me is yoga nidra (guided meditation). Search YouTube for a voice you like (some have bg music I hate, or thick accents which put me off). I can't find the one I use, but I downloaded it to an mp3 on my phone (no auto play!) and it works almost every night. 20 min meditation and I've almost never heard the last 5 mins. Edit: this is my fav https://youtu.be/7IEc3Y6D7BA https://youtu.be/7IEc3Y6D7BA
- mrcartmeneses 4y ago
  I tried a guided meditation app and the lady strayed talking about my tongue and my eyeballs. Weird
- dredev 4y ago
  Great to hear that you found something that works for you. If guided meditation works for you almost every night, then you should certainly stick with it! For many of our patients (including myself), guided meditation worked in the short term but then stopped working because it didn’t actually resolve their underlying insomnia (e.g., for me, a lot of my insomnia came from distortive thoughts I had about sleep). Our app is different from pure meditation/relaxation apps that offer “rain sounds”. Instead, we go through a psychology-based program (behavioral therapy) that walks you through the underlying causes of insomnia, helps you address the ones that are relevant to you, and uses techniques like sleep restriction therapy to limit the amount of time you spend in bed. I’ll give an example. Let’s say when you go to bed at night, you’re constantly thinking about unfinished todos or worrying about some big upcoming event. While meditation and “rain sounds” might help distract you enough to fall asleep, what if you stopped having those thoughts in bed in the first place? That’s what our app aims to do. In terms of pricing, we do offer a free, 7-day trial and our price ends up being about $45 per month. In comparison, seeing an in-person treatment specialist costs about $150-200 per session without insurance, or $25-$50 per session with insurance. Typically, you would see an in-person specialist every week or every other week.
lxe 4y ago
I stopped a few pages into the survey. What is up with this ridiculous trend? I automatically hate any app that does this. Stop treating your users like idiots.
- dredev 4y ago
  Hi! Thanks for your feedback! We were partly inspired by Noom (https://www.noom.com/ https://www.noom.com/) and the success they have with longer surveys. That being said, we're definitely hearing the feedback here, and will look into either how we can simplify our survey or offer an option to bypass it.
thorgrimr 4y ago
I've had insomnia for years, cured it with one hard rule: wake up everyday at the same time. Every other adaptation was extra. I read about the rule in The Effortless Sleep Method by Sasha Stephens.
- dredev 4y ago
  Glad that this rule works for you! There are also other rules you might find helpful as part of stimulus control. For example: 1. Use the bed only for sleep and sex 2. Get out of bed if unable to fall asleep within 20 minutes 3. Have a plan-of-action for what to do if woken up in the middle of the night That being said, behavioral therapy for insomnia is not just about stimulus control or sleep hygiene. This is because there is little evidence that sleep hygiene alone is sufficient to treat chronic insomnia. Instead, we use a multi-component therapy that includes cognitive restructuring, sleep restriction or consolidation, and relaxation techniques. You can read more about it at https://slumber.one/how-does-cbt-i-work https://slumber.one/how-does-cbt-i-work.
  - LinAGKar 4y ago
    >Get out of bed if unable to fall asleep within 20 minutes So basically, never sleep?
    - maccard 4y ago
      No, the point is that if you're not asleep within 20 minutes you should wind down more outside of bed and try again. it helps me to reinforce the "no phone/reading/whatever" in bed rules, and means I don't lie awake for hours in bed - I get up and read in the living room for an hour and try again.
      - Handytinge 4y ago
        I've tried this method. It involves me sitting somewhere else until 6am not being able to sleep instead of my bed.
- 4y ago
joe__f 4y ago
I often don't sleep much. I roughly follow your 'don't stay in bed for more than 20 minutes if you're not sleeping' rule. My reasoning is something like, 'if you're lying in bed and _trying_ to sleep, it means your body needs something else more than sleep, such as, moving around, sitting up, managing anxiety or other emotions, etc.' Then I come back later when I don't have to try. How do you think that fits in line with your understanding of the research? (Also, your $45pm price point is way out of my budget. Maybe if I was managing less well with my own methods I would be desperate enough to spend that much)
- dredev 4y ago
  This is a great rule to follow, and for precisely the right reasons. Staying in bed trying to force yourself to sleep is generally counterproductive, because (1) over the long-run, that creates a negative association in your mind between your bed and being a place of wakefulness, and (2) trying but failing to fall asleep might make you anxious/stressed about not being able to fall asleep, which could put you into a negative feedback cycle that makes it even harder for fall asleep. Joe, we do have patient assistance plans available to make our app accessible to everyone. If you email us at hello@slumber.one and mention that Ed from HN sent you, we'd be more than happy to help.
brailsafe 4y ago
Very very slow, and I ain't entering my card information. No thanks.
dirtbag__dad 4y ago
1. It’s hard for me to go a night without waking up repeatedly while tossing and turning. So I don’t know how to answer how many hours of sleep I’m getting. I think I’m mostly asleep, but the sleep is terrible quality? Unclear whether your program will help with this. 2. I would love to try your program but I’m not giving you my cc up front. Have you considered moving the payment form to after a trial ends? 3. Love that you are using a scientifically-backed approach to solve this problem and make that crystal clear!
Moldoteck 4y ago
I recalled this site: https://fixsleep.link/ https://fixsleep.link/ just a bunch of advices based on peer-reviewed studies for this exact purpose, no buttons, nu subscriptions, just simple design and 17 advices
- nvarsj 4y ago
  Lots of great advice in here. I am curious about: Turn on the lights to 100% 30 minutes before waking up. Has anyone actually tried that? I do have Hue lights in my room so I could set it up. But I'm really sensitive to light (even the barest light shining through a crack in a window will wake me up). I think this would just wake me up 30 minutes earlier and it sounds pretty awful.
  - davidkuennen 4y ago
    I'm doing this for two years now with my hue lights and the wake up function. It's so much better than waking by an alarm. It gradually lights up your room and starts 30 minutes before wake up time. I do however most of the time wake up when it starts lighting up the room.
    - nvarsj 4y ago
      Interesting. I’m going to try it out.
  - GoToRO 4y ago
    It's hard if your bed time varies. If you go to sleep at 3 am, a lamp that turns on at 7 am will not help. What you can do is sleep as much as you need and then when you wake up but are still in bed, turn on the lamp yourself. After some time you will really feel how the brain turns on.
- balfirevic 4y ago
  It's interesting to see how much of this common advice doesn't apply to certain people. For example: 1) Cooldown the room to 17°-18° C before sleep That's freezing. I have trouble sleeping if it's colder than 23°-24° C 2) Warm up the room to ~22° C before waking up Yeah, that's already too cold. 3) Don't consume calories 3 hours before bed I can't fall asleep hungry (unless I'm dead tired I guess), so if I'm still hungry when it's time for sleep I better go eat. 4) Forget about the snooze button and setting multiple alarms I can just as well forget about waking up for whatever it is that I need to wake up for. -------- Still - all of this is worth trying. It probably does help most of the poeple.
jamietanna 4y ago
I've used (and had a recommendation of someone who really struggled with sleeping) https://www.ptsd.va.gov/appvid/mobile/insomnia_coach.asp https://www.ptsd.va.gov/appvid/mobile/insomnia_coach.asp and it was really good. My sleep wasn't so bad, but this did make a big difference and helped reset a few things around sleep. Worth a look for anyone interested
ano88888 4y ago
thank you. Sleeping less than 5 hours on average.This is exactly what i need.
- dredev 4y ago
  Glad that you find our app helpful! Please feel free to reach out at hello@slumber.one if you have any questions or feedback :D
throwaway2a02 4y ago
What EEG device were you using? Is it the OpenBCI Cyton, by any chance? I'm currently working with a similar ADS1299-based device, but I've still got a lot of work to do on it.
Vanit 4y ago
What solved it for me was trying meditation, just of my own accord. I wasn't even trying to sleep, but nearly blacked out 3 times in 20 minutes just clearing my mind and focusing on my breathing in a dark room. After that I just do the same thing in bed and it works a treat. Before I figured this out it felt like I forgot how to sleep.
powmonk 4y ago
Price is way, way, way too high.
chaostheory 4y ago
I feel that apps like this only apply when the cause is anxiety. CBD has worked wonders for me and my sleep, though I realize that it’s still not legal everywhere.
seaerkin 4y ago
Oh, look - another click-through questionnaire that ultimately leads you to a payment page. For anyone looking for actual free advice, check out the Huberman lab podcast or Matt Walker's sleep podcast. I struggled with insomnia for a brief period, and luckily, my fix was simple. All it took was more time outdoors and not eating close to bedtime. I went from having trouble falling asleep and waking up in the middle of the night 3-4 times a week to sleeping through the night, and now I can't remember the last time I woke up in the middle of the night. Most of my time is spent indoors, working indoors, and exercising indoors at the gym. So my fix was as easy as spending more time outside. Most mornings, I walk out around sunrise or shortly after that. Try also to do an afternoon walk or spend time outside doing whatever it may be. Also stopped eating 3-4 hours before bedtime. Stopping the late meals was huge for me, and I notice now that when I wake up in the middle of the night, it usually coincides with a night of lots of food and drink before bed. Indeed, we're all different, so I'm not saying what worked for me will work for you but it may be worth trying as my recommendations are free and easy to implement, and also backed by research that the podcasts I mentioned go into great detail about. Best of luck to anyone struggling, and I hope you can leverage the many free resources out there.
julitork 4y ago
How do you cancel subscription? There is no clear way to do it.
vimy 4y ago
I got into the first startupschool batch with this idea. But health problems sabotaged me so it never went anywhere. The website looks too amateurish and generic. Doesn’t give me a lot of confidence about the product. You should redo it completely. I think the key to success is finding the right partnerships. Doctors and clinics who will refer patients to your app. So that grant you got is a great first step.
joshcsimmons 4y ago
Exploitative. This is a free app I've used on iOS that implements the same CBT-i techniques: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cbt-i-coach/id655918660 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cbt-i-coach/id655918660 Not pretty but works perfectly!
pedalpete 4y ago
As a life-long insomniac, I used to get very angry with the CBT-I treatment. It was only recently when Dr Matthew Walker mentioned in a podcast "it's the best treatment we have today" that I decided to take that for what it is. CBT-I is not a cure for insomnia, it's sleep hygiene by a better name. There is no reason to pay a huge monthly fee for a CBT-I app. Sorry OP. This is something anybody can do themselves with a bit of research. If you are going to a "sleep therapist" it is also probably 70% of what you will hear, the other 30% likely will be how maybe you have apnea. I'm so saddened that this is the state of sleep science (which is why I started my start-up - more below). I'm not saying sleep hygiene isn't good, it is important, just like brushing your teeth and not eating too much sugar. But those are the basics for a healthy lifestyle, not some genius treatment for an illness. Sleep restriction therapy is a different beast all together. It is actively harmful to restrict your sleep. The damage is not worth the benefit. And yes, we are very aware that lack of sleep is damaging, so why do we recommend people do this? I did find it interesting that you bought an EEG device, and curious if you learned anything from it, aside from how difficult it can be to sleep with a "research grade EEG device". I'm in the neurotech/sleeptech space as the co-founder of https://soundmind.co https://soundmind.co - we are NOT in the insomnia space, we focus on improving the neurological function of your brain during sleep.
- dredev 4y ago
  Pete, thanks for sharing your thoughts. CBT-I isn’t just “sleep hygiene by a better name”. Sleep hygiene is one component of CBT-I, but there are several other components to it like cognitive restructuring, stimulus control, sleep restriction…etc. Here are a few articles that you might find helpful: https://slumber.one/how-does-cbt-i-work https://slumber.one/how-does-cbt-i-work, https://www.sleepfoundation.org/insomnia/treatment/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-insomnia https://www.sleepfoundation.org/insomnia/treatment/cognitive... The latest research confirms that CBT-I with sleep restriction therapy is an effective treatment for insomnia: (here’s a meta-analysis you might find helpful https://bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2296-13-40 https://bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-... and here’s an article by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine https://sleepeducation.org/sleep-restriction-therapy-insomnia/ https://sleepeducation.org/sleep-restriction-therapy-insomni...). From our conversations with our clinical advisors and sleep experts, for the right patient, sleep restriction remains an important and effective tool in using behavioral therapy to treat insomnia and has worked for tens of thousands of patients. While I empathize with you that there could be more research done in the sleep space, behavioral therapy for insomnia and sleep restriction therapy are both highly proven both by sleep researchers and in real-world clinical practice.
slickdork 4y ago
At $45 per month, you must only be interested in helping affluent people in HCOL cities. Otherwise, that's a truly baffling out of touch price point, especially for an app which requires little interaction with individual paying users on the back end. I've seen you justify it multiple times by saying 'people pay more to see people in person', but, and I mean this in honest good faith, that just reads as you saying:'people who suffer from insomnia will pay us whatever high price we decide because they are miserable and we offer a glimmer of hope.' That said, I hope it takes off and reaches a scale where you can lower your cost of entry, and this helps many people.

94 points by dredev 4y ago

noone_youknow 4y ago

How is this even a “show HN”? Literally just a thinly disguised money/data grab. Nope.

conartist 4y ago

Love seeing people recognise a problem (the time it takes to wait to see a specialist) and then solve it themselves. I'm interested what you used to build this?

dredev 4y ago
Glad that this resonates with you! The long waiting time it takes to see a specialist is exactly why we decided to build this app. My primary care doctor actually told me that he was often forced to choose between putting his patients with insomnia on months-long waiting list to see a therapist (which is the recommended first line treatment) and prescribing sleeping pills, and neither is desirable. Many of the sleep therapists we worked with to develop the program have also told us that they are so backed up with requests for sleep help, especially during COVID. We used Flutter for the mobile app, and it's Django in the backend with Postgres as our database. Our infrastructure is hosted on GCP. This is actually my first time building on flutter and was pleasantly surprised by how solid the developer experience was. I was choosing between react native and flutter, but had a terrible experience with react native for one of my projects back in college, so decided to give flutter a try.

mrwnmonm 4y ago

This is one of the worst sites I have ever been on. That survey is tooooo much. And marketing messages during the survey? Seriously? Disgusting.

dredev 4y ago
Hi! Thanks for your feedback! We were partly inspired by Noom (https://www.noom.com/ https://www.noom.com/) and the success they have with longer surveys and embedding marketing messages in the interstitial. That being said, we're still iterating and learning. I think the hardest part for us is striking a balance between keeping the survey short but still informative so that it is useful to our users.
- shellfishgene 4y ago
  Maybe you should mention above that you optimize your app mainly towards making profit, not helping people sleep.
- muzani 4y ago
  Normally I avoid sites like Noom for life, even after they get rid of the surveys. This has some kind of neurolinguistic programming/hypnotism feel where someone is trying to nonconsensually take your money. It's like a salesman asking you if you have problems, and they're always trying to reinforce in your mind that you have problems that go away once you give them the money. It just feels really creepy and dirty. With CBT, the user putting a lot of trust in the app and this feels like a violation of the trust before anything starts.
  - dgiol 4y ago
    *With CBT, the user putting a lot of trust in the app and this feels like a violation of the trust before anything starts.* My exact feeling here.
- lxe 4y ago
  This trend is the worst thing in apps. Stop it. Just show me what you offer and how much it is. Your users are smart and they want a solution to a problem. Don’t treat them like they are stupid.

ampham 4y ago

What’s the price of the subscription?

deleted 4y ago
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dredev 4y ago
We offer a 7-day free trial after which we charge about $45 per month. In comparison, seeing an in-person treatment specialist costs about $150-200 per session without insurance, or $25-$50 per session with insurance. Typically, you would see an in-person specialist every week or every other week.
- powmonk 4y ago
  You aren't competing against in person therapy though, you're an app. This is an insane leap of logic. I wish you luck but I don't see it happening for your at these rates.
  - dredev 4y ago
    Hi there, you're right that we're not competing against in-person therapy and many patients might prefer having an actual specialist to talk to. That being said, our program works for over 80% of our users and we're just as effective as in-person treatment. We're also running a clinical study with Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital to prove the efficacy of our program. We understand that not everyone can afford our program. Please email us at hello@slumber.one if you have difficulty paying for our program and we can find something that works for you!
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- ampham 4y ago
  Thanks! I would’ve liked to see this up front before filling out a really long survey so I could see if it’s something I can budget for after the free trial.

wnolens 4y ago

$131.81 per 3 months with current sale price. $188.30 otherwise Feels steep for a CBT app where I gotta do all the work! I sleep quite poorly, but I got to the checkout screen and.. nah. No doubt I'd drop that cash in an instant to sleep better. But I have little trust in filling out prompts and listening to rain sounds. What has worked quite well for me is yoga nidra (guided meditation). Search YouTube for a voice you like (some have bg music I hate, or thick accents which put me off). I can't find the one I use, but I downloaded it to an mp3 on my phone (no auto play!) and it works almost every night. 20 min meditation and I've almost never heard the last 5 mins. Edit: this is my fav https://youtu.be/7IEc3Y6D7BA https://youtu.be/7IEc3Y6D7BA

mrcartmeneses 4y ago
I tried a guided meditation app and the lady strayed talking about my tongue and my eyeballs. Weird
dredev 4y ago
Great to hear that you found something that works for you. If guided meditation works for you almost every night, then you should certainly stick with it! For many of our patients (including myself), guided meditation worked in the short term but then stopped working because it didn’t actually resolve their underlying insomnia (e.g., for me, a lot of my insomnia came from distortive thoughts I had about sleep). Our app is different from pure meditation/relaxation apps that offer “rain sounds”. Instead, we go through a psychology-based program (behavioral therapy) that walks you through the underlying causes of insomnia, helps you address the ones that are relevant to you, and uses techniques like sleep restriction therapy to limit the amount of time you spend in bed. I’ll give an example. Let’s say when you go to bed at night, you’re constantly thinking about unfinished todos or worrying about some big upcoming event. While meditation and “rain sounds” might help distract you enough to fall asleep, what if you stopped having those thoughts in bed in the first place? That’s what our app aims to do. In terms of pricing, we do offer a free, 7-day trial and our price ends up being about $45 per month. In comparison, seeing an in-person treatment specialist costs about $150-200 per session without insurance, or $25-$50 per session with insurance. Typically, you would see an in-person specialist every week or every other week.

lxe 4y ago

I stopped a few pages into the survey. What is up with this ridiculous trend? I automatically hate any app that does this. Stop treating your users like idiots.

dredev 4y ago
Hi! Thanks for your feedback! We were partly inspired by Noom (https://www.noom.com/ https://www.noom.com/) and the success they have with longer surveys. That being said, we're definitely hearing the feedback here, and will look into either how we can simplify our survey or offer an option to bypass it.

thorgrimr 4y ago

I've had insomnia for years, cured it with one hard rule: wake up everyday at the same time. Every other adaptation was extra. I read about the rule in The Effortless Sleep Method by Sasha Stephens.

dredev 4y ago
Glad that this rule works for you! There are also other rules you might find helpful as part of stimulus control. For example: 1. Use the bed only for sleep and sex 2. Get out of bed if unable to fall asleep within 20 minutes 3. Have a plan-of-action for what to do if woken up in the middle of the night That being said, behavioral therapy for insomnia is not just about stimulus control or sleep hygiene. This is because there is little evidence that sleep hygiene alone is sufficient to treat chronic insomnia. Instead, we use a multi-component therapy that includes cognitive restructuring, sleep restriction or consolidation, and relaxation techniques. You can read more about it at https://slumber.one/how-does-cbt-i-work https://slumber.one/how-does-cbt-i-work.
- LinAGKar 4y ago
  >Get out of bed if unable to fall asleep within 20 minutes So basically, never sleep?
  - maccard 4y ago
    No, the point is that if you're not asleep within 20 minutes you should wind down more outside of bed and try again. it helps me to reinforce the "no phone/reading/whatever" in bed rules, and means I don't lie awake for hours in bed - I get up and read in the living room for an hour and try again.
    - Handytinge 4y ago
      I've tried this method. It involves me sitting somewhere else until 6am not being able to sleep instead of my bed.
4y ago

joe__f 4y ago

I often don't sleep much. I roughly follow your 'don't stay in bed for more than 20 minutes if you're not sleeping' rule. My reasoning is something like, 'if you're lying in bed and _trying_ to sleep, it means your body needs something else more than sleep, such as, moving around, sitting up, managing anxiety or other emotions, etc.' Then I come back later when I don't have to try. How do you think that fits in line with your understanding of the research? (Also, your $45pm price point is way out of my budget. Maybe if I was managing less well with my own methods I would be desperate enough to spend that much)

dredev 4y ago
This is a great rule to follow, and for precisely the right reasons. Staying in bed trying to force yourself to sleep is generally counterproductive, because (1) over the long-run, that creates a negative association in your mind between your bed and being a place of wakefulness, and (2) trying but failing to fall asleep might make you anxious/stressed about not being able to fall asleep, which could put you into a negative feedback cycle that makes it even harder for fall asleep. Joe, we do have patient assistance plans available to make our app accessible to everyone. If you email us at hello@slumber.one and mention that Ed from HN sent you, we'd be more than happy to help.

brailsafe 4y ago

Very very slow, and I ain't entering my card information. No thanks.

dirtbag__dad 4y ago

1. It’s hard for me to go a night without waking up repeatedly while tossing and turning. So I don’t know how to answer how many hours of sleep I’m getting. I think I’m mostly asleep, but the sleep is terrible quality? Unclear whether your program will help with this. 2. I would love to try your program but I’m not giving you my cc up front. Have you considered moving the payment form to after a trial ends? 3. Love that you are using a scientifically-backed approach to solve this problem and make that crystal clear!

Moldoteck 4y ago

I recalled this site: https://fixsleep.link/ https://fixsleep.link/ just a bunch of advices based on peer-reviewed studies for this exact purpose, no buttons, nu subscriptions, just simple design and 17 advices

nvarsj 4y ago
Lots of great advice in here. I am curious about: Turn on the lights to 100% 30 minutes before waking up. Has anyone actually tried that? I do have Hue lights in my room so I could set it up. But I'm really sensitive to light (even the barest light shining through a crack in a window will wake me up). I think this would just wake me up 30 minutes earlier and it sounds pretty awful.
- davidkuennen 4y ago
  I'm doing this for two years now with my hue lights and the wake up function. It's so much better than waking by an alarm. It gradually lights up your room and starts 30 minutes before wake up time. I do however most of the time wake up when it starts lighting up the room.
  - nvarsj 4y ago
    Interesting. I’m going to try it out.
- GoToRO 4y ago
  It's hard if your bed time varies. If you go to sleep at 3 am, a lamp that turns on at 7 am will not help. What you can do is sleep as much as you need and then when you wake up but are still in bed, turn on the lamp yourself. After some time you will really feel how the brain turns on.
balfirevic 4y ago
It's interesting to see how much of this common advice doesn't apply to certain people. For example: 1) Cooldown the room to 17°-18° C before sleep That's freezing. I have trouble sleeping if it's colder than 23°-24° C 2) Warm up the room to ~22° C before waking up Yeah, that's already too cold. 3) Don't consume calories 3 hours before bed I can't fall asleep hungry (unless I'm dead tired I guess), so if I'm still hungry when it's time for sleep I better go eat. 4) Forget about the snooze button and setting multiple alarms I can just as well forget about waking up for whatever it is that I need to wake up for. -------- Still - all of this is worth trying. It probably does help most of the poeple.

jamietanna 4y ago

I've used (and had a recommendation of someone who really struggled with sleeping) https://www.ptsd.va.gov/appvid/mobile/insomnia_coach.asp https://www.ptsd.va.gov/appvid/mobile/insomnia_coach.asp and it was really good. My sleep wasn't so bad, but this did make a big difference and helped reset a few things around sleep. Worth a look for anyone interested

ano88888 4y ago

thank you. Sleeping less than 5 hours on average.This is exactly what i need.

dredev 4y ago
Glad that you find our app helpful! Please feel free to reach out at hello@slumber.one if you have any questions or feedback :D

throwaway2a02 4y ago

What EEG device were you using? Is it the OpenBCI Cyton, by any chance? I'm currently working with a similar ADS1299-based device, but I've still got a lot of work to do on it.

Vanit 4y ago

What solved it for me was trying meditation, just of my own accord. I wasn't even trying to sleep, but nearly blacked out 3 times in 20 minutes just clearing my mind and focusing on my breathing in a dark room. After that I just do the same thing in bed and it works a treat. Before I figured this out it felt like I forgot how to sleep.

powmonk 4y ago

Price is way, way, way too high.

chaostheory 4y ago

I feel that apps like this only apply when the cause is anxiety. CBD has worked wonders for me and my sleep, though I realize that it’s still not legal everywhere.

seaerkin 4y ago

Oh, look - another click-through questionnaire that ultimately leads you to a payment page. For anyone looking for actual free advice, check out the Huberman lab podcast or Matt Walker's sleep podcast. I struggled with insomnia for a brief period, and luckily, my fix was simple. All it took was more time outdoors and not eating close to bedtime. I went from having trouble falling asleep and waking up in the middle of the night 3-4 times a week to sleeping through the night, and now I can't remember the last time I woke up in the middle of the night. Most of my time is spent indoors, working indoors, and exercising indoors at the gym. So my fix was as easy as spending more time outside. Most mornings, I walk out around sunrise or shortly after that. Try also to do an afternoon walk or spend time outside doing whatever it may be. Also stopped eating 3-4 hours before bedtime. Stopping the late meals was huge for me, and I notice now that when I wake up in the middle of the night, it usually coincides with a night of lots of food and drink before bed. Indeed, we're all different, so I'm not saying what worked for me will work for you but it may be worth trying as my recommendations are free and easy to implement, and also backed by research that the podcasts I mentioned go into great detail about. Best of luck to anyone struggling, and I hope you can leverage the many free resources out there.

julitork 4y ago

How do you cancel subscription? There is no clear way to do it.

vimy 4y ago

I got into the first startupschool batch with this idea. But health problems sabotaged me so it never went anywhere. The website looks too amateurish and generic. Doesn’t give me a lot of confidence about the product. You should redo it completely. I think the key to success is finding the right partnerships. Doctors and clinics who will refer patients to your app. So that grant you got is a great first step.

joshcsimmons 4y ago

Exploitative. This is a free app I've used on iOS that implements the same CBT-i techniques: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cbt-i-coach/id655918660 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cbt-i-coach/id655918660 Not pretty but works perfectly!

pedalpete 4y ago

As a life-long insomniac, I used to get very angry with the CBT-I treatment. It was only recently when Dr Matthew Walker mentioned in a podcast "it's the best treatment we have today" that I decided to take that for what it is. CBT-I is not a cure for insomnia, it's sleep hygiene by a better name. There is no reason to pay a huge monthly fee for a CBT-I app. Sorry OP. This is something anybody can do themselves with a bit of research. If you are going to a "sleep therapist" it is also probably 70% of what you will hear, the other 30% likely will be how maybe you have apnea. I'm so saddened that this is the state of sleep science (which is why I started my start-up - more below). I'm not saying sleep hygiene isn't good, it is important, just like brushing your teeth and not eating too much sugar. But those are the basics for a healthy lifestyle, not some genius treatment for an illness. Sleep restriction therapy is a different beast all together. It is actively harmful to restrict your sleep. The damage is not worth the benefit. And yes, we are very aware that lack of sleep is damaging, so why do we recommend people do this? I did find it interesting that you bought an EEG device, and curious if you learned anything from it, aside from how difficult it can be to sleep with a "research grade EEG device". I'm in the neurotech/sleeptech space as the co-founder of https://soundmind.co https://soundmind.co - we are NOT in the insomnia space, we focus on improving the neurological function of your brain during sleep.

dredev 4y ago
Pete, thanks for sharing your thoughts. CBT-I isn’t just “sleep hygiene by a better name”. Sleep hygiene is one component of CBT-I, but there are several other components to it like cognitive restructuring, stimulus control, sleep restriction…etc. Here are a few articles that you might find helpful: https://slumber.one/how-does-cbt-i-work https://slumber.one/how-does-cbt-i-work, https://www.sleepfoundation.org/insomnia/treatment/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-insomnia https://www.sleepfoundation.org/insomnia/treatment/cognitive... The latest research confirms that CBT-I with sleep restriction therapy is an effective treatment for insomnia: (here’s a meta-analysis you might find helpful https://bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2296-13-40 https://bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-... and here’s an article by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine https://sleepeducation.org/sleep-restriction-therapy-insomnia/ https://sleepeducation.org/sleep-restriction-therapy-insomni...). From our conversations with our clinical advisors and sleep experts, for the right patient, sleep restriction remains an important and effective tool in using behavioral therapy to treat insomnia and has worked for tens of thousands of patients. While I empathize with you that there could be more research done in the sleep space, behavioral therapy for insomnia and sleep restriction therapy are both highly proven both by sleep researchers and in real-world clinical practice.

slickdork 4y ago

At $45 per month, you must only be interested in helping affluent people in HCOL cities. Otherwise, that's a truly baffling out of touch price point, especially for an app which requires little interaction with individual paying users on the back end. I've seen you justify it multiple times by saying 'people pay more to see people in person', but, and I mean this in honest good faith, that just reads as you saying:'people who suffer from insomnia will pay us whatever high price we decide because they are miserable and we offer a glimmer of hope.' That said, I hope it takes off and reaches a scale where you can lower your cost of entry, and this helps many people.