Sleep health knowledge

There is no sleep standard that applies to everyone. The only core indicator to judge whether sleep is healthy is that you do not feel lingering fatigue within 10 minutes after waking up, and that you have enough energy to support normal work and social interactions during the day. The so-called "must sleep for 8 hours" and "must go to bed before 11 o'clock" are rigid requirements that are not universal.

Many people's anxiety about sleep actually comes from their obsession with "8 hours." This number is essentially the average sleep time for people of all ages, which is similar to the per capita income. If you can't reach it, it doesn't mean you are abnormal. I used to know a girl born in 1995 who worked as a game artist. She would go to bed at 1 a.m. and wake up at 7 a.m., and lie down at the company workstation for 20 minutes at noon. All the indicators in the last physical examination were normal. In the past two years, I saw too many posts about "staying up late can cause cancer". She forced herself to lie in bed at 10:30, tossing and turning until after 1 o'clock. When she fell asleep, she woke up at 7 a.m. and her head felt so heavy that she couldn't lift it up. She almost collapsed for half a month. She went to the sleep department for monitoring for three consecutive days. The doctor said that she was born a short sleeper and needed less total sleep time than ordinary people. Forcing her to change her schedule disrupted her rhythm. She was simply looking for trouble for herself.

Speaking of work and rest rhythm, it has also been a point of great controversy in recent years. The elders have believed in the health-preserving logic of traditional Chinese medicine all their lives, saying that nap at noon is golden, and that 11 pm to 3 am is the time for liver and gallbladder detoxification. If you don’t sleep at this time, toxins cannot be excreted, which will cause great harm to the body. There are indeed many friends around me who are used to going to bed early and getting up early. They say that they are particularly energetic after 6 o'clock all year round. This logic completely adapts to their physical feelings. But the research conclusions of modern sleep medicine are also supported: as long as you maintain a fixed work and rest rhythm, and each 90-minute sleep cycle (from light sleep to deep sleep to REM period) is complete, even if you go to bed at 3 a.m. and start at 11 noon every day, maintaining this pattern for a long time, The body will also automatically adjust the rhythm of hormone secretion to adapt to this schedule. The health risks are not higher than those of people who go to bed early. There are also studies abroad that have been followed for more than 10 years, confirming that people who go to bed late regularly and have good sleep quality for a long time have no significant difference in the incidence of chronic diseases compared with people who go to bed early. To put it bluntly, both views are correct. The key depends on which one suits your body. For people who are naturally active in thinking at night and groggy during the day, there is really no need to force yourself to be a "morning person" and waste your emotions in vain.

As for the most troublesome problem of insomnia, the friends I have met who have sleep disorders have tried all kinds of useful methods, and there is no standard answer at all. A friend who worked as an Internet operator suffered from insomnia for half a year. He tried counting sheep, listening to white noise, and soaking his feet all to no avail. Later, the doctor taught him a "method to make things worse". Don't force yourself to sleep while lying in bed. Just close your eyes and think, "I won't sleep today, and I will be sleepy all day tomorrow." Instead, he fell asleep in less than ten minutes. He said that the more he forced himself to sleep, the tighter his nerves became. When he was really relaxed, he became sleepy faster. The same applies to the now popular mindfulness breathing method. Some people can fall asleep in 5 minutes by adjusting their breathing rhythm while lying down. Others become more awake as they count their breaths, and their minds are filled with "How many times did I count just now?", which makes them more anxious. Including naps, some people squint for 10 minutes at noon and feel energetic all afternoon, some people sleep for half an hour and wake up drowsy for two or three hours, and some people even lean on a chair and nap for 5 minutes at noon, but have to keep their eyes open until midnight at night. In this case, just don't take naps at all. These are all rules that you have tried out by yourself. There is no need to copy other people's experience.

There are also a few common sleeping aid pitfalls that need to be mentioned. Nowadays, many young people buy high-dose imported melatonin when they suffer from insomnia. In fact, melatonin is only suitable for people suffering from jet lag, or elderly people over 60 years old who have insufficient melatonin secretion. The melatonin secreted by healthy young people is enough to support sleep. Long-term consumption of high-dose exogenous melatonin will inhibit their own secretion function. In the end, if you don’t take it, you will not be able to sleep at all, which is not worth the gain. Some people believe that "drinking alcohol can help you sleep". It is true that you will fall asleep quickly when you lie down in bed feeling dizzy after drinking. However, alcohol will directly interrupt deep sleep. You may seem to have slept all night, but in fact you are in the light sleep stage most of the time. You are prone to waking up frequently in the second half of the night. When you wake up, you will have a headache and fatigue, which is more tiring than staying up all night.

Oh, by the way, many children are always worried that the elderly at home are not sleeping well because of poor health. In fact, as people age, their deep sleep time will naturally decrease, and the total sleep time they need will also decrease. It is completely normal for elderly people over 60 years old to sleep 5-7 hours a day. There is no need to force yourself to lie in bed for 8 hours. The more you lie down, the more anxious you will be, which will make you more likely to suffer from insomnia.

To be honest, the "sleep anxiety" on the Internet is really too much now. It says that not sleeping enough for 8 hours will make you look ugly, cause cancer, and cause memory loss. Basically, we put aside individual differences to talk about the harm. Staying up late once in a while will not cause any irreversible damage. Don't worry about it just because you didn't get enough sleep the day before, but it will affect your sleep the next day. Your own physical feelings are more reliable than all standards and all studies. If you are still tired after sleeping for more than two weeks in a row, or you can't fall asleep after lying in bed for more than half an hour, it will be much more useful to go directly to the sleep department of a regular hospital than to search online for half a day.