Insomnia Coach

Overall, I’ve benefited from using this app. What I learned was that I was going to bed too early, which is why I was waking in the night for sometimes 1-2 hours of just lying awake, so learning that was helpful, however, despite putting in information about sleeping well with fewer and shorter wake-ups, it kept pushing my bedtime until it was past 11 pm, cutting my sleep down to less than 7 hours, when I kept telling the app I’m feeling good at just under 8 hours or about 7h30m (this is down from attempting to get 9+ a night but waking up in the night). If I go to bed before the prescribed bedtime because I’m tired and I fall asleep quickly, the app chastises me for going to bed too early as it disrupts my sleep drive, but if I’ve fallen asleep in 5 minutes or less, that shows high sleep drive and sleep hygiene will ding you for the short time it takes to fall asleep, too, so I wish it would accept that if I went to bed 15 minutes early and also fell asleep quickly, maybe that’s what I needed. You can edit the bedtime it gives you, but it chastises you for editing that, too. When I’ve gone to bed 15 minutes early and fallen asleep quickly, I would think it would edit my bedtime to earlier, not later and later and later. Despite my frustrations with some of the advice, I have recommended it to friends and patients who are having trouble sleeping as I do think I learned some things.

I suddenly began having issues staying asleep after Covid. Sometimes I would go 2-3 days without sleeping at all and rarely slept more than 6 hours per night. This went on for 5 months prior to finding this app. Lack of sleep made me feel miserable, and I began having anxiety and panic attacks. I consulted my doctor who prescribed Trazodone which didn’t help me sleep any better and made me feel even worse the next day. I tried to get an appointment with sleep clinics, counselors, therapists, etc and all told me they weren’t taking new patients. I was so desperate for help and sleep and feeling so terrible. I found this app and did not have high hopes that it could help me. I was amazed at how well it worked. After getting through the first week of logging my sleep schedule, the sleep coach made sleep and wake time recommendations. I was going to sleep, staying asleep, and feeling 100% better within 2 days. It was amazing, and I am so thankful for this VA program! I truly feel like it saved my life. Lack of sleep had taken me to a very dark place. Thank you to the developers of this app for providing a way for people with chronic insomnia to help themselves.

I’ve really been enjoying this app and I’m not even using half the features it has. I have recommended it to friends. I love entering my sleep information into the sleep diary and seeing the trends over time as I work on my sleep hygiene. One feature I do NOT like is that the app locks all the sleep diary entries (no edits or additions) if you update your sleep time prescription even if you haven’t completed the entry for that day! It’s very frustrating because now I have unnecessary holes in my diary because I wanted to make the dialog box asking me to update those sleep times to go away. SUGGESTION: They should have a warning box instead that says if you edit any entries for your current sleep prescription it will undo it or that edited information won’t be included after a sleep prescription has been run for that week. Either way, let me edit my sleep diary please!