100 lectures on sleep health

For most non-pathological sleep problems, there is no need to rely on supplements or force yourself to fall asleep before 11 o'clock. As long as you adjust three small details of daily behavior, you can increase the duration of deep sleep to more than 20% of the total sleep within 2 weeks, and the time to fall asleep is stably controlled within 15 minutes.

I was particularly impressed by the 98-year-old girl who was an e-commerce operator who came to my clinic last week. She came in with half a box of melatonin and said that she had set an alarm clock for going to bed at 10:30. She still kept her eyes open until 2 o'clock. She read a post about "staying up late for a long time can cause cancer" and was so scared that her heart beat faster and she couldn't sleep anymore. Isn’t this the norm for most young people nowadays? Treating sleep as a KPI that must be completed has led to shackles.

In the past, many popular sciences emphasized that "bedtime and wake-up time must be fixed, and you cannot catch up on sleep on weekends." This is the mainstream view of traditional sleep medicine. It is indeed very useful for people with a regular schedule. However, if you are born with a night sleep phase and force yourself to lie down at 11 o'clock, you will produce anticipatory anxiety because you cannot fall asleep, and it will be more difficult to enter deep sleep. Oh, yes, a study just released by the Stanford Sleep Laboratory last year mentioned that as long as nocturnal people adjust their bedtime to their accustomed 12 to 1 o'clock, and ensure a total sleep time of 7 hours a day, the proportion of deep sleep will be 37% higher than if they forcefully go to bed at 11 o'clock, which will not affect their health at all.

Speaking of which, I worked on a project for more than half a month and had difficulty falling asleep. It took me more than 40 minutes to fall asleep after tossing and turning in bed. I didn't take any supplements, so I made two small changes: one was to adjust the bedroom air conditioner from the usual 26 degrees to 22 degrees, and the other was to turn the electronic clock with a green light on the bedside to face away from me. With these two small actions, the time it took me to fall asleep dropped to 18 minutes on the third day, and the proportion of deep sleep returned to 23% after a week. Don’t think it’s magical, there are two core points: a suitable low temperature can help core body temperature drop quickly, making it easier to trigger drowsiness. ； If you can't see the time, you won't always be calculating in your mind "how long have I been lying down without falling asleep", and naturally you will be less anxious.

Many people ask me if I should never check my phone before going to bed? This is actually quite controversial. The traditional view is that blue light will inhibit the secretion of melatonin, and it is best not to touch electronic devices one hour before going to bed. However, last year our team conducted a small sample intervention experiment and found that if you watch slow-motion live broadcasts that do not use your brain, or food clips with no plot, before going to bed, , on the contrary, it is much more relaxing than lying down and rehearsing the day's work KPIs and next week's report in your mind. As long as the screen brightness is adjusted to the lowest level and more than 30 cm away from the face, the inhibitory effect of blue light on melatonin is actually less than 10%. On the contrary, it can help you clear your mind of chores and reduce anxiety before going to bed. Of course, if what you are reading is a brain-burning suspense drama, or work group messages that easily make people excited, then forget it. It is no joke that the more you read, the more energetic you will become.

Have you ever felt this way? I finally didn’t have to go to work on the weekend and I slept for 10 hours at a stretch. But when I woke up, I felt groggy and even more tired than if I slept for 6 hours on a weekday? Many people think it's because you slept too much, but it's not at all. It's because you have too much light sleep, which is equivalent to leaving your phone plugged in and charging all night. It's not as effective as a quick charge of one hour. As long as normal adults can sleep deeply for 1.5-2 hours, even if the total duration is only 6 hours, they will wake up refreshed.

Many people also ask whether melatonin can be taken? Don't listen to others who say it's either a miracle drug or a poison, it depends on the situation. If you only suffer from jet lag occasionally, or have a short-term disorder after staying up for two or three days in a row, taking low-dose melatonin within 1mg can really help you adjust quickly, without any side effects. ； But if you have suffered from insomnia for more than a month and are still taking high-dose melatonin of more than 3 mg, it will suppress your own melatonin secretion rhythm. The more you take it, the less effective it will be. In severe cases, it will also affect your mental state during the day, and the gain will not be worth the candle.

I have been doing sleep intervention for almost 8 years. I have seen too many people turn sleep, which is a physiological instinct, into a task that needs to be strictly performed. They are stuck on points, stuck on time, and bought a lot of sleep-aid aromatherapy pillows, but they become more and more anxious. You really don’t need to be so nervous. If you haven’t fallen asleep after lying down for 20 minutes today, don’t lie down and count sheep. Get up and turn on a night light to read two pages of a non-nutritious book. Wait until you feel sleepy before going back to lie down. It is 10 times more effective than waiting for you to fall asleep. Oh, by the way, if you can't fall asleep even if you lie down for more than an hour for more than a month, and you still feel flustered and chest tight during the day, don't just go to the neurology department of the hospital for a check-up. The most important thing is to rule out pathological problems.