Show HN: I made an app to help insomniacs learn how to sleep again (slumber.one)
In the day, it took an immense amount of energy for me to perform even the most mundane of tasks, such as doing my laundry or ordering groceries. At night, I felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness and resentment as I lay in bed wide-awake, reading and re-reading Sleep by Murakami or mindlessly scrolling through reddit/ HN. My performance at work suffered, my personal relationships suffered, and my happiness suffered.
When I finally decided to see a sleep specialist, I was put on a 3-month long waiting list. Eventually, I was able to get my insomnia treated, but I realized that there is no reason why anyone should wait 3 months to get treatment when the same therapy that I received can be delivered online. My co-founder and I both have experience in digital health, so we decided to partner with sleep experts to create a mobile app to help people with insomnia get better sleep using psychology.
We launched in February this year, and have already helped over 500 patients improve their sleep permanently. Our data shows that our program is just as effective as group, in-person sleep therapy, and we’re doing a clinical study with Brigham and Women’s hospital and Harvard Medical School to prove the efficacy of our product. On average, our users sleep 74 minutes longer than before and spend 52% less time awake in the middle of the night.
If you have trouble with sleep, try our app and let us know what you think!
76 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 140 ms ] threadI'm interested what you used to build this?
We used Flutter for the mobile app, and it's Django in the backend with Postgres as our database. Our infrastructure is hosted on GCP. This is actually my first time building on flutter and was pleasantly surprised by how solid the developer experience was. I was choosing between react native and flutter, but had a terrible experience with react native for one of my projects back in college, so decided to give flutter a try.
This has some kind of neurolinguistic programming/hypnotism feel where someone is trying to nonconsensually take your money. It's like a salesman asking you if you have problems, and they're always trying to reinforce in your mind that you have problems that go away once you give them the money.
It just feels really creepy and dirty.
With CBT, the user putting a lot of trust in the app and this feels like a violation of the trust before anything starts.
My exact feeling here.
I wish you luck but I don't see it happening for your at these rates.
We understand that not everyone can afford our program. Please email us at hello@slumber.one if you have difficulty paying for our program and we can find something that works for you!
Feels steep for a CBT app where I gotta do all the work!
I sleep quite poorly, but I got to the checkout screen and.. nah. No doubt I'd drop that cash in an instant to sleep better. But I have little trust in filling out prompts and listening to rain sounds.
What has worked quite well for me is yoga nidra (guided meditation). Search YouTube for a voice you like (some have bg music I hate, or thick accents which put me off). I can't find the one I use, but I downloaded it to an mp3 on my phone (no auto play!) and it works almost every night. 20 min meditation and I've almost never heard the last 5 mins.
Edit: this is my fav https://youtu.be/7IEc3Y6D7BA
Our app is different from pure meditation/relaxation apps that offer “rain sounds”. Instead, we go through a psychology-based program (behavioral therapy) that walks you through the underlying causes of insomnia, helps you address the ones that are relevant to you, and uses techniques like sleep restriction therapy to limit the amount of time you spend in bed.
I’ll give an example. Let’s say when you go to bed at night, you’re constantly thinking about unfinished todos or worrying about some big upcoming event. While meditation and “rain sounds” might help distract you enough to fall asleep, what if you stopped having those thoughts in bed in the first place? That’s what our app aims to do.
In terms of pricing, we do offer a free, 7-day trial and our price ends up being about $45 per month. In comparison, seeing an in-person treatment specialist costs about $150-200 per session without insurance, or $25-$50 per session with insurance. Typically, you would see an in-person specialist every week or every other week.
I know I could hit cancel, but I am often bad at doing that on time, which leads me to avoid trying out things that require payment details up-front.
Thanks for sharing!
https://checkout.stripe.com/pay/cs_live_b1WrHao6Sw3In1xSCzhG...
I agree meditation is a bit of a short fix, but without knowing what this app really does, I have a difficult time trusting that it's anything more.
45/mo feels like a marketing trick when the minimum charged is $133 :(
There's definitely a mental block with paying hundreds of dollars for a phone app. Most apps on my phone remain unopened. I've tried a few health aids like this before.
I'd download a free/trial version if it helped me get any amount of of sleep back, and then with established trust, pay $20+/mo for access to rest of features.
Otherwise maybe sell through those specialists? Help them manage their patients.
Maybe the solution is a shorter one like you mentioned, so it only helps me get into that sleepy phase. I completely agree in its effectiveness though, I often violate almost every rule of good sleep hygiene and a guided medication will still do the job of getting me to sleep if I'm desperate.
I think you feel that way because you don't need the app enough. $188 to fix sleep when you're not getting enough is a bargain.
$188 to not fix your sleep is not cheap.
Regarding efficacy, our program works for over 80% of our users and we're just as effective as in-person treatment. In comparison, seeing an in-person treatment specialist costs about $150-200 per session without insurance, or $25-$50 per session with insurance. Typically, you would see an in-person specialist every week or every other week.
That being said, we understand that not everyone can afford our program. Please email us at hello@slumber.one if you have difficulty paying for our program and we can find something that works for you!
They also have excellent meditation for naps, where you can set how long you want to nap before they wake you up.
I read about the rule in The Effortless Sleep Method by Sasha Stephens.
1. Use the bed only for sleep and sex 2. Get out of bed if unable to fall asleep within 20 minutes 3. Have a plan-of-action for what to do if woken up in the middle of the night
That being said, behavioral therapy for insomnia is not just about stimulus control or sleep hygiene. This is because there is little evidence that sleep hygiene alone is sufficient to treat chronic insomnia. Instead, we use a multi-component therapy that includes cognitive restructuring, sleep restriction or consolidation, and relaxation techniques.
You can read more about it at https://slumber.one/how-does-cbt-i-work.
So basically, never sleep?
So i put three alarms in alexa everyday at 7:30pm, 8:00pm and 8:30pm where alexa says "time to sleep, I'm reminding you time to sleep for a great day tomorrow and last is final reminder, it's time to sleep." respectively.
I have seen that 3 reminders to sleep does it and we all go to bed always before the 3rd reminder. I have never slept before 4am otherwise. So weird a robot voice can have this effect, but its the only thing that was able to fix my sleep schedule.
The only con is when you have guests over and alexa starts speaking like this, it can make things very weird and people feel we are trying to make them leave :P
Also:
* Get up early (like 6AM early)
* Avoid stimulants (caffeine etc) after midday (I used to drink tea/coffee in the evening, and then wonder why I couldn't sleep)
* Get a dog (helps with the getting up early part, also makes you do exercise)
* Get technology out of your bedroom (a lamp is ok, but get rid of the TV, leave your phone/tablet/laptop in another room while you sleep)
It really isn't rocket science.
Good luck finding out what helps you!
How do you think that fits in line with your understanding of the research?
(Also, your $45pm price point is way out of my budget. Maybe if I was managing less well with my own methods I would be desperate enough to spend that much)
Joe, we do have patient assistance plans available to make our app accessible to everyone. If you email us at hello@slumber.one and mention that Ed from HN sent you, we'd be more than happy to help.
2. I would love to try your program but I’m not giving you my cc up front. Have you considered moving the payment form to after a trial ends?
3. Love that you are using a scientifically-backed approach to solve this problem and make that crystal clear!
I am curious about: Turn on the lights to 100% 30 minutes before waking up.
Has anyone actually tried that? I do have Hue lights in my room so I could set it up. But I'm really sensitive to light (even the barest light shining through a crack in a window will wake me up). I think this would just wake me up 30 minutes earlier and it sounds pretty awful.
It's so much better than waking by an alarm. It gradually lights up your room and starts 30 minutes before wake up time. I do however most of the time wake up when it starts lighting up the room.
1) Cooldown the room to 17°-18° C before sleep
That's freezing. I have trouble sleeping if it's colder than 23°-24° C
2) Warm up the room to ~22° C before waking up
Yeah, that's already too cold.
3) Don't consume calories 3 hours before bed
I can't fall asleep hungry (unless I'm dead tired I guess), so if I'm still hungry when it's time for sleep I better go eat.
4) Forget about the snooze button and setting multiple alarms
I can just as well forget about waking up for whatever it is that I need to wake up for.
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Still - all of this is worth trying. It probably does help most of the poeple.
This is nirvana for me, I sleep best that way.
If I do not have warm covers I do not sleep well (pour when it is too hot). I also cannot sleep naked, I need to cover my shoulders with a tshirt otherwise I am always cold.
I always wondered how much psychological this is but I do not want to experiment with my sleep.
Most of my childhood and teenage life (before I moved out of my parents home), since almost nobody heats bedrooms where I live.
With lower temperatures, I have to wear very warm shirts/sweater as I inevitably uncover my shoulders and pull my arm out of cover. Getting into cold bed is uncomfortable. Getting out when the room is cold is even worse. Also, cold bedrooms are terrible for sex (for me at least).
This is all solved by heating the room nicely. Mind you, I still use relatively warm cover (light clothing, though) when bedroom temperature is 23°-24° (during the winter). Right now it's 26° and light cover is fine.
I'm currently working with a similar ADS1299-based device, but I've still got a lot of work to do on it.
CBD has worked wonders for me and my sleep, though I realize that it’s still not legal everywhere.
For anyone looking for actual free advice, check out the Huberman lab podcast or Matt Walker's sleep podcast. I struggled with insomnia for a brief period, and luckily, my fix was simple. All it took was more time outdoors and not eating close to bedtime. I went from having trouble falling asleep and waking up in the middle of the night 3-4 times a week to sleeping through the night, and now I can't remember the last time I woke up in the middle of the night.
Most of my time is spent indoors, working indoors, and exercising indoors at the gym. So my fix was as easy as spending more time outside. Most mornings, I walk out around sunrise or shortly after that. Try also to do an afternoon walk or spend time outside doing whatever it may be. Also stopped eating 3-4 hours before bedtime.
Stopping the late meals was huge for me, and I notice now that when I wake up in the middle of the night, it usually coincides with a night of lots of food and drink before bed.
Indeed, we're all different, so I'm not saying what worked for me will work for you but it may be worth trying as my recommendations are free and easy to implement, and also backed by research that the podcasts I mentioned go into great detail about. Best of luck to anyone struggling, and I hope you can leverage the many free resources out there.
The website looks too amateurish and generic. Doesn’t give me a lot of confidence about the product. You should redo it completely.
I think the key to success is finding the right partnerships. Doctors and clinics who will refer patients to your app. So that grant you got is a great first step.
CBT-I is not a cure for insomnia, it's sleep hygiene by a better name. There is no reason to pay a huge monthly fee for a CBT-I app. Sorry OP. This is something anybody can do themselves with a bit of research. If you are going to a "sleep therapist" it is also probably 70% of what you will hear, the other 30% likely will be how maybe you have apnea. I'm so saddened that this is the state of sleep science (which is why I started my start-up - more below).
I'm not saying sleep hygiene isn't good, it is important, just like brushing your teeth and not eating too much sugar. But those are the basics for a healthy lifestyle, not some genius treatment for an illness.
Sleep restriction therapy is a different beast all together. It is actively harmful to restrict your sleep. The damage is not worth the benefit. And yes, we are very aware that lack of sleep is damaging, so why do we recommend people do this?
I did find it interesting that you bought an EEG device, and curious if you learned anything from it, aside from how difficult it can be to sleep with a "research grade EEG device".
I'm in the neurotech/sleeptech space as the co-founder of https://soundmind.co - we are NOT in the insomnia space, we focus on improving the neurological function of your brain during sleep.
CBT-I isn’t just “sleep hygiene by a better name”. Sleep hygiene is one component of CBT-I, but there are several other components to it like cognitive restructuring, stimulus control, sleep restriction…etc. Here are a few articles that you might find helpful: https://slumber.one/how-does-cbt-i-work, https://www.sleepfoundation.org/insomnia/treatment/cognitive...
The latest research confirms that CBT-I with sleep restriction therapy is an effective treatment for insomnia: (here’s a meta-analysis you might find helpful https://bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-... and here’s an article by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine https://sleepeducation.org/sleep-restriction-therapy-insomni...). From our conversations with our clinical advisors and sleep experts, for the right patient, sleep restriction remains an important and effective tool in using behavioral therapy to treat insomnia and has worked for tens of thousands of patients.
While I empathize with you that there could be more research done in the sleep space, behavioral therapy for insomnia and sleep restriction therapy are both highly proven both by sleep researchers and in real-world clinical practice.
Otherwise, that's a truly baffling out of touch price point, especially for an app which requires little interaction with individual paying users on the back end.
I've seen you justify it multiple times by saying 'people pay more to see people in person', but, and I mean this in honest good faith, that just reads as you saying:'people who suffer from insomnia will pay us whatever high price we decide because they are miserable and we offer a glimmer of hope.'
That said, I hope it takes off and reaches a scale where you can lower your cost of entry, and this helps many people.
Nope.