Big Health (Sleepio & Daylight) Reviews 

I am only in my third week of Sleepio, having been requested to try it by my doctor. I am too tired to do anything during the day due to having to get out of bed if I am not asleep (restricted sleep strategy). I would not be happy if I had to drive or do anything imortant during the day. I can't see that this will improve. As I have had interrupted sleep for more than thirty years I know quite a lot about the problem and don't find the advice useful. I am affected by changing weather and atmospheric pressure, which is not addressed.

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.

Tough going at first with the sleep deprivation part (i.e. not being able to go to bed until a certain time, which initially was 3am in my case, and making sure not to nap outside of the permitted sleep window) but it did help to a point; that point being the course duration, beyond which it just becomes merely a diary for your continued sleep pattern following what the course has guided you to do, including a ridiculous automated never ending opportunity to add 15mins weekly to your sleep window; I stopped adding the 15mins at reaching a 12 hours sleep window, from which at best I got up to a 7hrs average total sleep per day (from about 3hrs before I started the course) yet this average at times does still fall back to lower than this, plus still waking on average about three occasions during my sleep (so the course did not stop the interrupted aspect with my daily sleep) but even when contacting Sleepio about this never ending automated adding of 15mins each week they merely acknowledged this as a flaw in the program and expected program users to realise this flaw and ignore the automated opportunity to keep adding 15mins each week at a certain point if your progress was good and this was still nonsensically being offered. My other more major disappointment is after a year of daily entering all the required sleep data from each night’s sleep, without warning I found myself locked out of the program as, it transpires, Sleepio only allow users access to it for a year, which was frustrating as consequently that year’s data of my sleep pattern became unavailable to me. Given Sleepio was recommended to me by my GP to aid tackling my sleep problems, it does make me wonder if there is a better Sleep app out there the NHS should instead be recommending. One other problem I found with the program was how to be certain of what time I actually fell asleep for this data entry requirement, as it’s difficult to clock watch right up to the nearest 15mins before falling asleep; I eventually overcame this by using a separate free sleep recorder app I found elsewhere to monitor snoring/teeth grinding/breathing to better pinpoint when I actually fell asleep (plus establish if snoring and/or teeth grinding and/or possible sleep apnea were problems for me regarding why my sleep is self-interrupted; none of these possible symptoms were a problem but at least this addition helped me be more accurate regarding when I actually fell asleep each day and the number of occasions per night I woke up).

Right from the very first day Sleepio helped me sleep better.

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

Completed this course, stuck by the rules and I had no improvement in my sleep!! You are given basic tips such as no caffeine, write worries down before going to bed etc etc. All the things most insomniacs know. The main core of the course is the use of sleep restriction so that you’re so worn out that you will eventually sleep.

The sleep restriction causes anxiety and if you’re not asleep within 15 minutes you are told to get up and do an inane task such as clearing a out drawer - pleazzze !!! The restriction is usually 5 hours. You have to sleep in those allotted 5 hours and if not you’re advised to get up.

There are no professionals on there to speak to nor is it being monitored by any professionals. There’s a weekly chat session with a psychiatric doctor but it’s just a posting message type of thing. The answer I got to my question wasn’t very fulfilling. The whole thing is run by the community of people on the course itself. There is one particular participant on there and she works really “hard”trying to support students and gives lengthy messages with tips and strategies. She has been a user, completed the course and is successfully maintaining. From what I’ve read mainly is that unless you stick to the sleep restriction for life your insomnia will come back.

My sleep remained the same for the whole time with no improvement even tho I used all the tips and tools given to me. At the end of the week you are set goals and the programme assess your sleep diary for the completed week. A computer generated “professor” with an irritating voice tells you at the end of the week that “you’re doing so well your sleep efficiency is up!!! Really I hadn’t noticed I must have blinked and missed it! Mine stayed the same.

I wouldn’t recommend this course unless you know nothing about sleep hygiene, only have mild sleeping problems and like tidying up drawers at 2am in the morning.

I suspect the NHS has paid a fortune for this rubbish programme.

I’ve tried it and completed it but unfortunately it’s not one size fits all. Maybe it’d work for you.

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.

I have been using Sleepio App now for 2 weeks and it has not helped at all. The questionnaire is poorly thought out. Whoever constructed it clearly has no idea about sleep issues. What is the point in making the sleep diary just so you can see how poorly you are sleeping? You are asked to record the time you go to bed and how long it takes you to go to sleep. How would you know what time it goes to sleep unless you suddenly check a clock just as you are about to nod off!!! Duh!! So you then wake yourself up again!! So basically this means you need a sleep tracker which are also totally inaccurate.

Went through a 15min questionnaire on how my sleep is effected only to be told right at the end that they don't help people in my area?! Surely that would be a good thing to mention right at the beginning. Waste of my time!