Sleep health education content

First, there should be no persistent feelings of fatigue, dizziness, or weakness within 30 minutes after waking up, and there should be no uncontrolled drowsiness during normal work and social interactions during the day.； Second, falling asleep for more than 30 minutes, waking up more than 2 times at night, and being unable to fall back asleep after waking up early should occur no more than 2 days a week. If you meet these two points, even if you only sleep 6 hours a day and go to bed at 1 a.m. and wake up at 8 a.m. all year round, it is not considered a sleep problem and there is no need to worry at all.

When I was doing a free health clinic in the community last month, I met a 62-year-old Aunt Zhang. She clutched her mobile phone and asked. She said on the Internet that the elderly need to sleep for 7 hours to avoid Alzheimer's disease. She goes to bed at 10pm every night and wakes up at 4am, and only sleeps 6 hours. Is there something going on? I asked her what she did during the day, and she said she would send her grandson to school in the morning, dance square dance for an hour when she came back, and play mahjong for two hours in the afternoon. She would not feel tired even if she took her grandson for a walk in the evening. This kind of sleep was completely fooled by the standardized requirements on the Internet. Everyone's sleep needs are different. Teenagers may need 8-10 hours. As melatonin secretion decreases for the elderly, 5-7 hours is normal. There is no unified passing line.

At this point, I just want to mention the topic that everyone is arguing about now: "Is there any use in taking a nap?" Traditional health-preserving theories say that midnight (23:00-1:00) is the time for liver detoxification, and deep sleep is necessary to be good for the body. In contemporary sleep medicine research, this view is actually more inclined to "priority of work and rest schedule is higher" - if you are If you go to bed at 2 a.m. and wake up at 10 a.m. all year round, your sleep cycle is complete, and the duration of deep sleep and REM sleep is up to standard, the damage to your body is far less exaggerated than the popular saying on the Internet that "you can't make up for it by staying up late for three days." What you are most afraid of is going to bed at 10 a.m. today, going to bed at 2 a.m. the next day, and staying up all night the day after tomorrow. The schedule jumps back and forth. Disruption of the biological clock is really harmful to the body.

In the three years I have been doing sleep intervention, 90% of the non-pathological sleep problems I have encountered are not "insomnia" at all and are all caused by myself. For example, a young Internet operator who came for consultation last week said that it took her more than an hour to fall asleep and she tossed and turned in bed every day. I asked her what she did after going to bed. She said that she watched short videos. She could still laugh out loud when she watched the funny ones. Think about it, short videos last for 15 seconds and the cerebral cortex is always in a state of excitement. Lying in bed is equivalent to feeding stimulants to the brain. It’s strange that she can fall asleep. The trick I gave her was very simple. I unplugged the mobile phone charger and put it in the living room. She could only take a professional book that she couldn't read when she went to bed. She went back and tried it for a week. She said that now she felt sleepy after turning two or three pages, and the time it took to fall asleep was shortened to less than 20 minutes. It was solved without spending a penny.

Oh yes, there are also everyone’s favorite sleep aid products. To be fair here, don’t pay the IQ tax indiscriminately. Melatonin is clinically recommended only for people suffering from jet lag and elderly people over 65 years old who have insufficient melatonin secretion. Ordinary young people can secrete enough melatonin by themselves. If you supplement it, it will inhibit your own melatonin secretion. If you stop taking it for a long time, you will sleep worse. Sleep gummies are very popular right now. I checked the test reports of several Internet celebrity products before. Many of them have melatonin content that is more than three times higher than the label. Some of them add a little gamma-aminobutyric acid, which is said to relax the nerves. In fact, most people find it useful after taking it. It is the effect of psychological suggestion. If you really can't sleep for more than a week, don't buy random health products. Go to a sleep department for monitoring first, which is better than anything else.

Someone also asked me, should I sleep during lunch break? In fact, there is no standard answer to this. If you feel refreshed after taking a nap for 15-20 minutes at noon, then sleep ； If you sleep for more than an hour as soon as you fall asleep, feel drowsy all afternoon, or can't sleep in bed at night, then you don't need to sleep at all. Just make a cup of light tea or coffee in the afternoon to refresh yourself. Don't force yourself to take a lunch break, which will disrupt your sleep rhythm at night.

Let me tell you about my personal experience. Last year, I worked on a project for half a month. I went to bed at 3 a.m. and woke up at 9 a.m. every day. Later, after the project ended, I wanted to adjust back to a normal schedule. At first, I forced myself to lie down at 11 a.m., but I couldn’t fall asleep until after 1 a.m. On the contrary, the more I lay down, the more anxious I became. Later, I went to bed 15 minutes earlier than the day before every day. I went to bed at 2:45 today and 2:30 tomorrow, and then slowly adjusted back. Within a week, I was back to the state of going to bed before 12 o'clock. It was very stable and there was no need to make any "cliff-type schedule adjustments". It is useless to compete with yourself.

Finally, let me tell you the truth. When it comes to sleep, the most taboo thing is "excessive attention." I have seen too many people lying in bed and starting to count, "I can sleep for 6 hours now, and I can sleep for 5 hours." Just treat sleep as a normal thing like eating and drinking water. When you are sleepy, go to bed. If you are not sleepy, get up and sit for a while. Don’t add too much burden of “health maintenance” and “detoxification” to it. Most sleep problems are actually caused by yourself.