One-third of life is spent in sleep, the quality of sleep has a huge impact on human health, and adequate sleep is one of the three health standards recognized by the international community.
Today, Professor Wang Chunxue of The Sleep Medicine Center of Beijing Tiantan Hospital told us that there are methods for assessing sleep quality.
Quickly assess the quality of our sleep!
Is not sleeping well a disease?
There are clear criteria for the judgment of the disease of "insomnia" in medicine.
- Sleep duration: Sleep duration is less than 6 hours, or sleep for more than 30 minutes.
- Sleep quality: waking up at night and not being able to fall asleep again, or waking up more than 1 hour earlier than normal, and not being able to fall back asleep, this situation occurs more than 3-4 times a week, in a chronic state.
- Limited daytime function: regardless of nighttime sleep, daytime mental difficulties, feeling sleepy and tired.
The above condition is more than 3 months, which is called chronic insomnia and is a state of disease.
In addition, just like eating, the amount of meals becomes smaller and smaller as we age, and the above time standard is for most adults.
The total amount of sleep for a small child is definitely longer than the standard, up to 10 hours.
The elderly will be shortened, the elderly may be 5 hours is enough, and even some elderly people only sleep for 4 hours at night, and then take a nap during the day, which is enough for him.
These are all normal ranges, and it doesn't necessarily mean 8 hours of sleep, but most people still have to guarantee at least 6 hours.
However, medical standards are for most people, and it is inevitable that a small number of people will have special circumstances.
Now research in the United States has made it very clear that people have a "short sleep gene", especially some successful celebrities, such as Einstein and Lincoln.
They are such people, they have very little time to sleep every day, 4 hours a day is enough, super energetic during the day, their brains are very smart, and they learn everything quickly.
So in a sense, they could do twice as much in their lives as we do.
But to remind everyone here, people with "short sleep genes" are very, very few after all, most people still need to ensure 6-8 hours of sleep, do not blindly imitate them, genes are not the same.
At present, it is not medically possible to test whether you carry this "short sleep gene" by conventional means.
If you really sleep very little every day, it doesn't affect your health at all, and you feel very comfortable yourself, then you just follow your own routine and don't need to force yourself to sleep for 8 hours.
However, for growing children and adolescents, it is recommended to go to bed as early as possible, because the peak of growth hormone secretion is between 10 pm and 2 am.
Scientifically assess sleep quality
Some people may ask: "I wear some smart watches to monitor sleep and assess sleep quality, is it okay?" ”
Sleep quality, in fact, is a relatively abstract concept, either I did not dream today or slept well, I fell asleep today is to sleep well. A general assessment can be made from both aspects.
(1) Daytime functional activities
The core of the assessment of sleep quality is whether the spirit is good during the day.
It doesn't matter what time you go to bed at night, how many times you get up at night, whether you dream or not, whether you sleep for 6 hours or 8 hours (of course these are also important), but the most important thing is how your spirit is during the day.
For example, some people who love to snore when they sleep are medically called sleep apnea syndrome, and they may sleep for seconds, sleep until dawn, and still be drowsy during the day.
Because they have been in a state of lack of oxygen for a long time, the brain cannot get enough rest, so even if they sleep for more than ten hours, they are still in bad spirits.
(2) Calculate sleep efficiency
We can also calculate our sleep efficiency through a simple calculation.
- Denominator: Time spent lying in bed (counting from the beginning of lying in bed, including time spent lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, lying down and playing with the phone, etc.)
- Molecular: The time of actual sleep
For example, I started lying in bed at 12 o'clock, but in fact, I fell asleep at 2 o'clock in the middle of the night, woke up at 6 o'clock in the morning, and lay in bed until 8 o'clock.
Although I lay in bed for 8 hours, I actually only slept for 4 hours, so my sleep efficiency was only 50%.
But sleep efficiency of more than 85% is qualified!
Therefore, it is recommended that you do not lie in bed, brush your mobile phone, play games, eat, chat, and develop good living habits, go to bed just to sleep.
If some people are too busy to sleep for 8 hours, or even 6 hours, this is also a very helpless thing.
Since the molecule cannot be changed, it can at least reduce the denominator a little, that is, let yourself lie in bed for a while, as far as possible to match the actual time of sleep, which can also improve sleep efficiency.
Deep sleep? Light sleep?
We lie in bed and sleep, it seems to be a big sleep, in fact, the process is divided into many, many small sleeps, this explanation is more complicated.
In simple terms, it can be understood as light sleep, medium sleep between deep and light sleep, deep sleep, and a dreaming period after deep sleep.
Shallow-medium-deep-dream, these four cycles take about 90-120 minutes, most of which are in light sleep, and we need 4-6 cycles every night.
If a night is all light sleep, of course it is not good.
You may have to ask Momo, "If I'm all deep asleep, doesn't that mean I'm well rested?" ”
Peach centennial reminds that if it is all deep sleep, this is trouble! There is a severe type of encephalitis, in which the patient sleeps particularly long, even severe coma.
Everyone has a dreaming period, but if the dreaming period is too long or too much, it is not normal.
If you wake up during the period when you are not dreaming, you will not remember the contents of the dream, and even think that you are not dreaming.
If you wake up during a dream, you will remember that you were dreaming just now, so dreaming does not mean that you did not sleep well.
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