Big Health (Sleepio & Daylight)Reviews of sleepio.com

I registered for this website, but I could never log in with the password I used during setup. The tech support was terrible—the link to change my password required me to enter the original password, which made no sense. It was a frustrating chicken-and-egg situation that left me unable to even try the service. The entire process is almost as stressful as dealing with sleep deprivation.

GP recommended this to me. I had already done Sleepstation several years back and found that unless I stick rigidly to what is basically a very short time in bed to force sleep, there's no difference in how I sleep. And it's so horrible to have to stay awake longer than normal folk AND get up really early every day to basically exhaust yourself so that you sleep in one block. Anyway, it was at least a better experience than Sleepio (it cost a lot more) in terms of logging in, presentation, content, feedback and support. The tech support tried to help but I can only log in online.

The goal of Sleepio is NOT to increase the amount of time you sleep for. The goal is to "increase" sleep efficiency (time asleep divided by total time in bed) to 90% by decreasing the amount of time you spend awake in bed. You have to get out of bed if you've been lying awake for 15 minutes. If you take 15min to fall asleep, sleep for only 4 hours 20min then lie awake for 15min before getting out of bed (not unusual for me) then you have a sleep efficiency of 90% and Sleepio congratulates you on your success. My sleep efficiency was already above 90% before I began the course, but Sleepio continued to plough on with its own goal of "increasing" my sleep efficiency to 90%. There was never any mention of increasing sleep duration, which was my goal. I read the results of Sleepio's clinical trial and discovered that at the end of the Sleepio course the insomnia patients were only sleeping for 5 hours 46 min per day! And the Sleepio treatment increased time asleep by less than other GP treatments! But Sleepio chooses to focus only on sleep efficiency, which has no meaning for me. The course is delivered by an animated "Prof" who I felt extremely patronized by. If he was a real person I would either ask him to stop or I would walk away and avoid him in future. But I felt unable to walk away because my GP prescribed this. The Prof told me to change my negative attitudes to sleep and insomnia (which I don't have - I love sleep and even insomnia has some benefits), that I shouldn't feel so alone and isolated (which I don't), that I have to stop worrying (I wasn't), etc. During every session you get multiple choice questions to test that you've been paying attention. When you get the answer right (they are patronisingly easy), you still have to listen to the Prof explain it again, as though you had got it wrong. For anyone with sensory processing issues Sleepio is a nightmare of animation plus audio plus subtitles that can't be turned off plus detailed multiple choice questions and written information that all occur at the same time. I didn't know which one I was supposed to be focusing on. Sleepio did absolutely nothing to help me sleep for longer each night and I cannot recommend it.

The first weeks (!!) are wasted with tracking sleep and very general 'sleep hygiene' advice that surely most with a severe sleeping problem have explored in great detail (expect no change here, but unskippable videos with a cartoon professor mansplaining things). In my experience, by the time the only valuable help, sleep restriction, is applied, I may have given up on this. I tried restriction on my own before the programme told me. Further, there's no differentiation between interrupted sleep and problems falling asleep, which makes it at times sound it only serves the latter. Overall the approach is very rigid and the tone is patronising. Checking someone's knowledge and failed approaches to better sleep initially, and then starting where needed could have saved weeks of struggle. Sleep restriction worked for me, but it is hard to tell whether this was thanks to or despite Sleepio.

Not for everyone as it claim's to be - for insomnia, maybe useful if you've never spent hours online looking into sleep hygiene and inane tips for improvement. For day time fatigue, interrupted sleep, longer term issues, adults above 16, no. The score tracking of sleep diary makes no sense, if you waste a day with 12 hours of interrupted poor quality sleep that's apparently a 93% efficiency score... righhht.

Can't log in on the webpage nor on the app. Completely and utterly useless and even the log in pages are badly designed. Must have been done by the YTS lad. No wonder the NHS have partnered with them. They're also useless.

Didnt help at all Couldnt see the point of it, weekly cartoon video to watch, avoid caffeine etc, as a chronic insomniac I know this already 😡 Condescending voice on video. Daily sleep diary had to be input manually as couldnt link to Apple watch, found this very frustrating. Did not benefit me at all, waste of time and effort

The website said my details did not match what my employer had on file. Apparently they don't care about people not found on some particular register, a group that probably includes most people.