100: Sleep Science Today with Andrew Colsky - Episode 100100: Sleep Science Today with Andrew Colsky - Episode 100
UK Health Radio Podcast
Sleep Science Today marks its 100th episode with Dr Justin Brooks, unpacking insomnia through sleep diaries, wearables and the gap between perception and reality. The conversation looks at how technology, research and simple tracking can reshape how people understand and approach their sleep problems.
43:40•18 Aug 2026
Sleep Diaries, Wearables and the Truth About Insomnia with Dr Justin Brooks
Episode Overview
- Insomnia can stem from limited sleep opportunity, physiological issues, or a cognitive-perceptual mismatch about how someone thinks they sleep.
- Sleep diaries remain a core tool in therapy and trials, but paper versions are often completed late and can give poor quality data.
- Electronic, customisable sleep diaries with reminders can improve timeliness and provide clinicians with more reliable information.
- Consumer wearables provide coarse but useful estimates of sleep, yet can also trigger orthosomnia when people chase perfect scores.
- Pairing diary reports with wearable data may help some people with insomnia recalibrate their perception and feel better about their sleep.
“Sometimes changing people’s behaviour is really difficult. But sometimes changing their perception isn’t as much.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This milestone 100th episode of Sleep Science Today pulls back the curtain on how tech, psychology and old‑school note-taking collide in the messy reality of insomnia. Host Andrew Kolsky chats with Dr Justin Brooks, a physician, biomedical engineer and sleep researcher, about why insomnia is as much about what you *think* is happening at night as what actually goes on.
Dr Brooks explains insomnia as “a really interesting disorder… where a person really reports a lack of quality in their sleep,” and breaks it down into three broad buckets: limited opportunity to sleep (like shift workers and soldiers), physiological issues, and a cognitive-perceptual component where perception and reality drift apart.
You’ll hear how traditional paper sleep diaries still dominate clinics and trials, but come with hilarious flaws—like patients filling in two weeks of “nightly” data in the car park before their appointment. That’s where electronic diaries step in, with prompts and better timing, and Dr Brooks’ work on a customisable, clinic-friendly diary platform that can handle different sleep issues in one place. The conversation then shifts to wearables—actigraphy devices used in research versus consumer gadgets like Apple Watch and Fitbit.
Dr Brooks admits that while these devices give only “fairly coarse estimates of sleep,” they can still be useful when combined with diaries. But there’s a warning: some people slip into “orthosomnia”, becoming so obsessed with perfect sleep scores that their anxiety actually worsens their sleep.
Perhaps most striking is new research showing that, for many with insomnia, seeing objective data alongside their own estimates can *improve* how they feel about their sleep and narrow the gap between fear and reality. If you’ve ever stared at a clock at 4am or argued with your sleep app, this conversation might change how you think about your nights – are you ready to question your own sleep story?
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