Definition of sleep health

It does not simply mean "sleep enough for 7-9 hours", but sleep duration, sleep quality, and sleep rhythm all simultaneously match individual physiological needs without affecting the stability of daytime social functions.

A while ago, a visitor who was engaged in cross-border e-commerce came to me and said that he only sleeps 6 hours a day. Will he die suddenly? I tracked his sleep diary for two weeks and found that he goes to bed at 11 a.m. and wakes up at 5 a.m. every day. He hardly wakes up at night. He doesn’t have to rely on coffee during the day to go to work, and he doesn’t catch up on sleep on weekends. He is in extremely good condition. After checking the gene locus, it was found that he indeed carries the short sleep gene. This situation would be judged as "sleep deprivation" according to the old standards, but according to the current consensus, his sleep is completely healthy.

On the other hand, I also met a young girl who had just graduated. She could sleep for 9 hours a day, but she had random dreams every day. She woke up three or four times a night and checked her mobile phone for ten minutes before going back to sleep. In fact, this is similar to ordering takeout. It doesn’t mean you have a good meal if the portion is sufficient. Fresh ingredients, suit your taste, and make your stomach feel comfortable after eating. The same goes for sleep. Duration is the basic amount, quality is the quality of the ingredients, and rhythm is the time you eat - you always eat takeaways that are heavy in oil and salt at three in the morning. Even if the portion is sufficient, you will have gastrointestinal problems after eating for a long time.

Of course, this definition is not entirely without controversy. Traditional public health scholars prefer to give unified quantitative standards. For example, adults must sleep for 7 hours, otherwise it will increase the risk of chronic diseases. The advantage of this standard is that it is universal and convenient for popular science, but the problem is that it ignores individual differences. The precision sleep school that has emerged in recent years believes that individual daytime feelings and physiological indicators should be put first. Duration is only a reference item. There is no need to lie down hard to make up for 7 hours, which may easily lead to anxiety insomnia. Both views are supported by large sample data. No one is right or wrong. Ordinary people can choose the reference standard based on their own circumstances.

It’s an interesting observation. Many Internet practitioners I’ve come into contact with regard “sleeping with a pillow on the pillow” as a sign of good sleep. This is actually wrong - if you sleep on the pillow after get off work every day, it is most likely that you are overtired during the day. It is a forced sleep for the body, and it is not a true sleep health. Normal healthy sleep should be lying in bed for about 10-20 minutes and falling asleep naturally. You should not wake up more than once during the night. You can fall asleep again within 5 minutes after waking up. You don’t need to be yelled by anyone when you wake up in the morning, and you don’t lie in bed for half an hour without thinking about it.

Many people think, "I stay up late on weekdays and just sleep 12 hours on weekends to make up for it." There is a lot of quarrel in the academic circles about this now. One group believes that as long as the total sleep time in a week reaches the standard, occasional disruption of the rhythm will not have much impact. The other group has produced nearly ten years of follow-up data to prove that as long as the bedtime is 2 hours later than usual on more than 3 days a week, even if you catch up on sleep on weekends, the risk of developing metabolic syndrome will still increase by 30%. My own practical experience is that if you only occasionally stay up late at night to catch up on projects, catching up on sleep is indeed useful. But if you stay up until two or three o'clock every day and catch up on weekends until the afternoon, it is basically useless. On the contrary, it will mess up your rhythm more and more. On Sunday night, you will stay awake until early morning, and you will fall into an endless loop.

After all, there are actually not so many mysterious standards for sleep health, and there is no need to worry about the deep sleep duration of the sleep APP every day. Just ask your conscience: do you feel refreshed after waking up in the morning? Can you work normally during the day without feeling sleepy? Do you feel irritable and have a headache at every turn? If not, then your sleep is quite healthy. If you really have a problem, don't blindly search Baidu to get the correct answer. See a professional sleep doctor or instructor. It will be much more useful than buying a bunch of sleep-aid aromatherapy melatonin.