Popular Science of Sleep Health

There is no uniform "standard sleep template". As long as you have no uncontrollable drowsiness all day after waking up and can cope with work, study and daily activities normally, your sleep is healthy. The unified requirements of "you must fall asleep before 11 o'clock", "the proportion of deep sleep should reach 25%" and "you must sleep for 8 hours every day" are not as reliable as your own true feelings.

I'm not talking nonsense, but it was clearly put forward in the sleep guide updated by the American Sleep Medicine Association (AASM) in 2023. But at least half of the people I have contacted are anxious about the sleep data of smart watches: deep sleep is only 40 minutes? Am I getting older faster? Is immunity going to decline? There are indeed differences in the conclusions of different fields: sports scholars generally think that deep sleep is strongly related to muscle repair and growth hormone secretion, and fitness people can pay due attention to it; However, the consensus of the clinical medical community is clear: the sleep staging data of all consumer wearable devices have no clinical reference value, it only measures your body movement and heart rate, which is far from the real gold standard sleep monitoring (polysomnography), so it is not worthwhile to suffer from insomnia for this number.

More common than deep sleep anxiety is "staying up late anxiety". Many people lie awake until 11 o'clock even if they have nothing to do the next day. They start to panic: I stayed up late again. Is it going to hurt my liver? At present, there are indeed two mainstream views on "whether sleeping late counts as staying up late": one is the traditional sunshine rhythm theory, which holds that the hormone secretion of the human body follows the natural light, and the peak of liver and gallbladder repair and melatonin secretion is from 11: 00 to 3: 00 in the morning, which is harmful to the body; The other is the view of "individualized rhythm". As long as your work and rest are completely regular, such as sleeping at 3 am and starting at 11 am all year round, enough sleep time and stable sleep quality, it is not sleep deprivation and has little impact on health. I have been in contact with a young man who has been doing cross-border e-commerce operations for three years. His work and rest have been from 2 o'clock to 10 o'clock. All the indicators in this year's physical examination are normal. Instead, he forced himself to go to bed at 11 o'clock and lay down for three hours. I couldn't sleep. During that time, I had migraines and lost my hair every day.

Of course, it doesn't mean that you don't have to worry about all sleep problems. If you have the following situations and haven't relieved for more than 2 weeks, it is recommended to go to the sleep department for treatment:

The first reaction of many people who can't sleep well is to eat melatonin. There are more people around me who hoard melatonin than those who hoard cold medicine. In fact, the controversy about the use of melatonin is not small: ordinary consumers eat it as a sleeping fudge without side effects, and some even eat two tablets every day before going to bed; However, clinicians usually only recommend short-term and low-dose use for people with jet lag and delayed sleep phase. Long-term and high-dose consumption of melatonin may inhibit their own melatonin secretion, and may also lead to drowsiness, dizziness and endocrine disorders the next day. Pregnant women and adolescents are even less advised to eat casually.

I stayed up for more than half a month before, but I couldn't sleep until 2 o'clock after my work and rest were chaotic. I tried counting sheep and listening to white noise on the Internet, but it didn't work. Later, I used the "15-minute rule" in sleep cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT-I): if I haven't fallen asleep for 15 minutes, I'll get up and leave the bedroom immediately, and do something that doesn't require my brain, such as folding clothes and reading two pages of boring professional books. This method is also the first choice for chronic insomnia without side effects, which is much more reliable than taking sleep-helping products.

Oh, by the way, is it ok to catch up on sleep on weekends, which people often ask? Previous studies have said that sleep supplement on weekends will disrupt the biological clock, and some studies have said that sleep supplement can offset the usual sleep debt, and both sides have data support. In fact, you don't have to worry about it. If you only sleep for thirty or forty minutes a day, it's no problem to sleep for an hour on weekends. If you sleep 5 hours a day and 12 hours at a stretch on weekends, you will definitely feel groggy, but it will aggravate the difficulty of falling asleep next week. It is better to sleep 1-2 hours more than usual on weekends.

In fact, sleep is complicated and complicated, and it is simple and simple. Don't set so many standards for yourself. You are a sleeper, not a slave to sleep. It's not worthwhile to set several alarm clocks to wake yourself up for 8 hours, and it's not worthwhile to lie stiff and not dare to move for 11 o'clock. Did you sleep well? You have the clearest body, right?