I was about to return my Orion until...
...I slept in my uncooled mattress and remembered what it was like to wake up at 3am and feel all of the heat trapped between my body and the mattress. The kind of heat that makes it hard to fall back asleep because my body won't cool down.
The problem with the Orion – why I was thinking about returning it – was that it didn't feel like it was totally resolving my sleeping issues. I was still waking up, still having difficulty falling back asleep.
At the same time, I started using Stellar Sleep, a CBT-I app, and started realizing that my inefficient time in bed was due to insomnia. I realized the only true way to address the root of my sleep issues was to do some form of sleep restriction, which I'm honestly dreading trying.
So, what I realized was that even though I hadn't dealt with the root of my insomnia by adjusting body temperature, the Orion was helping provide some relief. Maybe improving my sleep by 10%? By eliminating those pockets of heat that I would wake up with so that I can more easily fall back asleep (eventually).
Has anyone else had a similar experience, where cooling helped but turned out to be only one piece of the puzzle?