How can people seek help for a disorder they don’t know they have? Medical Daily addresses the paradox.
“They want to find something in which it’s like a urine test and you know something and it only costs one cent,” Tarasiuk said. This is in contrast to current sleep tests, which can easily costs thousands.
The technology, unfortunately, hasn’t caught up to that desire. Questionnaires are the best tool we have, despite their many drawbacks. Self-reports are notoriously unreliable. Especially if people live alone, the challenge needs to be deferred to some other entity that can “watch” in the background. Smartphone apps that analyze people’s quality of sleep are largely gimmicks, says Yaniv Zignel, co-author of the recent study. If you want real evidence of a problem, you need to use real science.
