When talking about life, Kimura Kuichi once said, "Both adults and children should fall asleep with the hope of a happy tomorrow." At the same time, you should also get up early with a happy mood, which is the secret of longevity. ”
This should be the simplest form of sleep, but a good night's sleep has become a luxury for modern urbanites with overloaded brains.
At night, our spirits were so excited that we had to lie down early and close our eyes, but the wonderful drama in our minds made us unable to sleep at all.
In the morning, we pretended not to hear the alarm clock, just wanted to be entangled with the quilt for another hundred years.
Under the cycle of "can't sleep at night, can't get up in the morning", sleeping, which was originally a great pleasure in life, has in turn become a burden for people.
Medical experts Wang Zhan and Ouyang Xuan said in the book, "Sleep problems have caused trouble to hundreds of millions of people around the world, and in China, this number has reached as many as 300 million." ”
Only by knowing each other and knowing oneself can we never lose a battle. Today, let's follow two experts to learn about sleep and then embrace it.
01.
Do I have sleep problems?
In fact, many people have difficulty determining whether their sleep problems are serious or whether they are really lack of sleep. Similarly, many people aren't sure if they should try sleeping pills.
There's an easy and quick way to determine if you have a sleep problem – observe and understand your daytime activities.
For example, if you have to go back and forth for two hours after going to bed at night to fall asleep, but you still feel well rested during the day, you may not have sleep problems.
Conversely, if you lie in bed for two hours to fall asleep, and you are overly worried and anxious because you have been asleep for too long, and you feel very tired during the day the next day, then you may have some degree of sleep disorder.
In general, sleep disorders can be divided into two categories: sleep disorders and sleep paradoxes.
Among them, sleep disorders refer to difficulty getting enough sleep, difficulty falling asleep, and poor sleep quality. Sleep abnormalities refer to abnormal behaviors or physiological conditions during sleep, such as common sleepwalking, nightmares and other problems.
Among them, insomnia disorder is the most common and most familiar sleep disorder, which belongs to the problem of sleep disorder.
In fact, "insomnia" doesn't mean not being able to sleep at all for one night. Insomnia disorder refers to the fact that people have difficulty falling asleep at night or maintaining sleep, waking up frequently at night, or waking up prematurely and having difficulty falling asleep again, or sleeping for a long time but still feeling very tired and not resting well.
In summary, insomnia disorder manifests itself as three "no's", which are:
Can't fall asleep: Falling asleep too long or feeling like you can't fall asleep.
Poor sleep: Difficulty maintaining sleep, easy to wake up or wake up prematurely.
Poor sleep: Inability to recover mental strength through sleep.
Picture: "Supermarket Sleepless"
However, we don't have to rush to the right seat first. For insomnia problems, 50% of adults report having had such an experience at some point in their lives, and nearly 1/3 of adults report having had insomnia nights in the past year.
If it is occasional insomnia, it is mostly related to specific events, such as facing an important exam or changing the place of sleep. These types of insomnia problems usually do not have serious consequences, and as the stressors disappear, the insomnia problems slow down or disappear completely.
Insomnia disorders that can really cause harm need to meet certain clinical diagnostic criteria. For example, insomnia symptoms occur at least 3 nights a week, a condition that lasts for at least 3 months and causes significant pain or functional impairment.
So if your sleep problems are already so bad that they interfere with your daily work and life, go to the hospital and consult a doctor. Maybe your problem is beyond the scope of self-practice, at this time, scientifically assessing your sleep quality and following the doctor's advice is a better choice.
But if you don't feel drowsy enough to put in the work during the day, then don't scare yourself, maybe you just lost sleep once in an accident, or you don't need as much sleep yourself.
02.
What robs us of sleep?
Unlike insomnia, which we usually think of as too much stress, the real causes of insomnia may be more complex and accompanied by many physical and psychological problems, such as pain, physical discomfort, lack of exercise during the day, and respiratory problems.
Sometimes, insomnia may be related to the biological clock and its abnormalities in the regulation of body temperature. That is, some people who can't sleep at night are caused by the delay of the temperature rhythm, and their body temperature does not drop until very late.
Photo: Chongqing Forest
From relevant studies, the average body temperature of insomnia people is generally higher than that of people who sleep well. Moreover, the range of changes in body temperature in the former is small, and this lack of fluctuations in body temperature is likely to interfere with sleep.
Other factors that affect sleep include the use of drugs (such as stimulants, cold medicines, etc.), environmental conditions (such as light, sound, temperature, etc.), and certain sleep disorders, such as sleep apnea, periodic limb movement disorders, etc.
Of course, different psychological stresses can also affect sleep. For example, excessive academic or work stress, traumatic events (such as loss of love, loss of loved ones, etc.), emotional disturbances (such as anxiety, depression, overexcited, etc.) may weaken sleep ability.
In addition, insomniacs may have irrational expectations about the duration of their own sleep needs and the impact of sleep problems.
In fact, there is no standard answer to the question of how long a person should sleep. The amount of sleep each person needs varies greatly, often depending on whether the daytime activities go smoothly.
We need to realize that cognitive activity itself will directly affect sleep, clinging to "people have to sleep for 8 hours a day" and "can't sleep tonight and tomorrow will be finished", but it will make us more anxious and unable to sleep, so that we will completely become slaves to sleep.
03.
Prescribe a sleeping prescription for you
In fact, a good night's sleep is not as difficult as we think. We only need to do three things: maintain a regular routine, accumulate enough sleep energy, and learn how to relax.
First of all, we must maintain a regular schedule and adjust the sleep clock to a stable rhythm.
If you pay more attention to sleep or medical related information, you may know that the human biological clock will inertially lengthen backwards without natural regulation (natural rhythms such as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west). That is to say, we are more likely to have problems with sleeping late or even insomnia.
The most obvious example is that many people have a normal schedule in primary and secondary school, getting up at 6:30 in the morning and going to bed at 10 o'clock at night; but after going to college, their work and rest begin to become disordered, staying up until midnight at night and not getting up in the morning.
From a scientific point of view, in order to establish a regular routine, it is best to synchronize the body with nature. In the morning, the sun tells the brain that it is dawn, and the body temperature and blood pressure begin to rise, which is the best time to get up. If you need to adjust your sleep rhythm, pulling back the curtains to sleep is an effective auxiliary strategy.
Second, it is necessary to accumulate enough sleep energy.
Here, we need to introduce two concepts – sleep energy and sleep debt.
Our body's energy is characterized by periodic cycles. When you get up in the morning, after the rest of the previous night, the body is full of energy; after daytime activities and work. The body's energy is consumed in large quantities, and we feel tired and sleepy. At night, we yawn for days, have poor spirits, and have a significant decrease in awake energy and a significant increase in sleep energy.
Therefore, wake energy and sleep energy are one or the other, one declines, the other will rise. As the night deepens, the more sleepy and tired we feel, the more sleep debt we owe and the more energy we sleep. When enough sleep energy is accumulated, the sleep clock will start, making us just want to lie down in a comfortable bed and get a good night's sleep. After a good night's sleep, the sleep debt is paid off, the sleep energy is back to zero, and we are once again energetic to welcome the new day.
In general, the more exertion you are during the day, the more vitality you consume, the faster your sleep energy accumulates. The longer it takes to wake up, the more sleep energy accumulates.
Finally, learn how to relax.
Presumably, many people have a similar experience: the night before the trip, often excited to sleep, especially children in the spring or autumn tour before the night is always sleepless; on the eve of the exam, I know that I should go to bed earlier, but the brain can not sleep well, nervous to sleep.
These phenomena are common. If you want to get a good night's sleep, you have to relax your body and mind. Emotions such as excitement, nervousness, anger, fear, worry, anxiety, and sadness will put the body's nervous system on alert. When the brain's wake-up system is overactive, the sleep system is difficult to activate. Therefore, if you want to sleep well overnight, you should try to maintain a state of emotional peace and relaxation before going to bed.
Finally, Reading argues that we should first change our minds about "sleep."
In the end, getting quality sleep also requires careful maintenance of your own life. It requires a certain amount of self-discipline, and it is not a one-time transaction.
Perhaps, behind the question of "why can't I sleep", what makes us most uncomfortable is an imbalance – why do I have to work hard to sleep after a long day?
Therefore, lying in bed and playing with mobile phones will become the only "time of their own" in the minds of many people; therefore, many people feel that "if only people could not sleep". Sleep, seen as a burden by them, is not their own 8 hours.
Only when we take this precious time seriously can we have the motivation to invest in it continuously, steadily and proactively. Only in this way can it reward us.
Hopefully, we can all pay attention to sleep problems and no longer be kidnapped by sleep problems after adjustment and training.
I wish you all a good night's sleep from tonight onwards.
Recommended Reading:
Get a good night's sleep
Wang Zhan, Ouyang Xuan (by)