Recently, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released the "China Sleep Research Report 2023", in which the Chinese's late bedtime year by year and the declining quality of sleep have become phenomena that cannot be ignored.
The Global Daily also pointed out that the proportion of insomnia population in mainland China is 10% higher than the world average.
Why is good sleep a luxury right now? Can long-term insomnia regain lost sleep quality?
Experts in this issue:
First, who is more likely to sleep badly? Not only age, but also your work can affect sleep
【Question 1】Has insomnia worsened among young people in recent years? What is the root cause of not sleeping well at an age when you should have slept well?
Zhao Wei: In the past, we all thought that insomnia was the patent of the elderly, in fact, from my clinical point of view, the number of young people suffering from insomnia is indeed increasing, especially in the past few years of the epidemic.
Shen Chenyu: Academician Lu Lin of our psychiatric department (academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, psychiatric and clinical psychologist) mentioned a data that in the past three years, the global epidemic has increased by more than 100 million insomnia people, corresponding to about one-fifth in China, at least 20 million insomnia people. It also includes some mood changes such as anxiety and depression secondary to insomnia.
【Question 2】Why are there more people with insomnia during the epidemic? What job do people sleep the least?
Shen Chenyu: For sleep, the biological clock is very important, the so-called circadian rhythm.
Before the epidemic, everyone should go to work, go to school when they should go to school, there is an external constraint, in fact, many people need this external constraint. Once this external constraint was suddenly broken, especially during the epidemic, many students began to take online classes, and the matter of online classes had a great impact on them, making them have a lot of days and nights reversed.
Now that the epidemic has come to an end, I think it is still necessary to restore the necessary rhythm and resume the necessary offline socialization, work, and study.
Zhao Wei: The China Sleep Research Report 2023 also found that freelancers and non-workers had the lowest sleep quality, worse than blue-collar or ordinary white-collar workers.
The sleep duration of non-working people should be 7.36 hours, which is far lower than that of students and ordinary white-collar workers. This means that ordinary people need external constraints.
【Question 3】Will our sleep quality fall off a cliff for some reason?
Zhao Wei: Yes, age has a huge impact on sleep quality. Around the age of 50 to 59, there will be a stepwise decline in sleep quality.
There are many reasons for this:
First of all, with age, the secretion of melatonin decreases.
Second, there may be an increasing number of comorbid medical conditions, such as arthritis, heart disease, or respiratory diseases, which can lead to sleep disturbances.
In addition, neurological diseases such as cerebrovascular diseases and Parkinson's disease can lead to sleep disorders.
In addition, many people are not very accepting of aging, which may cause anxiety, depression and so on.
Shen Chenyu: Sometimes, we think that sleep disorders are equivalent to insomnia, but in fact, it is not exactly like this, sleep disorders are a relatively independent discipline, including more than 90 diseases. Some diseases can be divided into two categories:
One type is inability to sleep, including insomnia;
One type is poor sleep, which may be related to respiratory diseases or neurological lesions.
We may see that the main complaint of a patient is not sleeping well, especially middle-aged and elderly people, we think more carefully when we diagnose clinically, because it is not only an insomnia problem, but also may be accompanied by some sleep disorders caused by physical diseases, and the treatment involved may not be exactly the same.
Source: AgeClub
Editor's note: The "China Sleep Research Report 2023" shows that the sleep duration of people aged 30 to 49 has decreased significantly, and the proportion of people with high-quality sleep has gradually decreased. As we age, the length and quality of sleep decreases and decreases.
Second, going to bed late and going to bed early are the same? Can drinking alcohol before bed help me sleep? These sleep details are crucial
【Question 4】As long as you sleep for 8 hours, is it the same to go to bed late and go to bed early?
Shen Chenyu: A recent article I saw compared two sleep patterns:
Mode 1: Sleep from 10:00 at night to 6:00 the next day, sleep for 8 hours
Mode 2: The overall sleep time is postponed by 4 hours, from 2:00 am to 10:00 the next morning, which is also 8 hours of sleep.
After comparison, it was found that:
People who delay sleep are more likely to have depression, and the incidence of depression is increasing;
At the same time, the biological sex hormones in these people's bodies are disordered; For example, about eleven o'clock at night is the peak period of melatonin secretion, if you go to bed late for a long time, the peak period of melatonin secretion will be delayed accordingly, and people's sleepiness will also be delayed.
In addition, the stress hormones in the body of people who stay up late for a long time will show a peak state at night, and this long-term chronic stress will destroy the immune system.
Therefore, everyone should go to bed as early as possible, such as young people, it is recommended to go to bed from 11 to 11:30 at night, so that getting up at about 6 and 7 in the morning is more beneficial to health.
Source: Visual China
【Question 5】 Stressful and unable to sleep, can we drink alcohol to help us sleep?
Zhao Wei: Stress and anxiety are two different things, and appropriate stress is a motivator, but if the pressure is too much for a long time, it may trigger anxiety. This involves how to manage your own stress.
First of all, to look at stress correctly psychologically, I personally recommend that everyone live in the moment and do not think too much about what has not happened yet;
Second, it is not recommended to improve sleep by drinking alcohol, which can cause many other problems, such as destroying sleep structure.
Shen Chenyu: If you are already thinking about your sleep caused by stress insomnia or anxiety, I recommend that you come to the psychiatric clinic to take a look.
3. Want to sleep well? We can do it this way, and we can also "treat" it at home
【Question 6】I have slept poorly for a long time, how can I solve this problem? Are there free, effective, self-help treatment options?
Shen Chenyu: We can try "behavioral cognitive therapy". One of my teachers, he summarized the practice of this method in the sleep scene into a few words, called "up and down without moving".
l Up and down: It means that we need to fix a relatively stable biological clock, regardless of the working day or rest time, try to maintain a fixed bedtime and get up time.
l No: refers to people with insomnia who can restrict sleep during the day, do not make up sleep during the day, and do not nap; Not playing with your phone before going to bed; Avoid irritating beverages such as coffee and tea.
Movement: refers to a certain amount of physical exertion during the day, or exercise.
l Jing: refers to some anxiety insomnia, you can do mindfulness meditation or deep breathing before going to bed to stimulate the vagus nerve and abdominal sympathetic nerve.
This method is not immediate, it requires you to stick with it for a while, but if you keep trying, the vast majority of sleep problems can be alleviated.
【Question 7】Is melatonin a good solution to insomnia? How do we choose sleeping pills?
Zhao Wei: Let me first talk about melatonin, melatonin is not a drug, it is only useful for circadian rhythm disorders, and it is useful for people who work night shifts and jet lag. In addition, long-term use of melatonin has some safety risks.
For people with chronic poor sleep, cognitive behavioral therapy is preferred to improve sleep by changing false perceptions and behaviors about sleep.
Source: Visual China
Editor's note: Cognitive behavioral therapy mainly refers to the combination of cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy to change individual distorted cognition and behavior (CBDI), proposed by clinical psychiatry and psychologist A.T. Beck, with a wide range of uses, typical applications such as relieving life problems such as sleep and chronic pain and psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. Note that the approach is cyclical, changes are gradual, and require strong patient motivation to participate in treatment.
The second involves drug treatment, which generally includes tranquilizers and some new sleep drugs, including some other antidepressants.
l Non-tranquilizers are preferred in the elderly, because tranquilizers may cause accumulation effects in the elderly, and metabolism cannot cause the risk of falls;
But anxious people can consider tranquilizers, which are good anti-anxiety drugs;
Depressed people may need to use antidepressants. Remember to follow your doctor's advice and pay attention to safety when taking sleeping pills.
Shen Chenyu: The reasons why melatonin cannot be included in the drug are:
First of all, each person's bioabsorption rate of melatonin is different, which is not easy to quantify, so it cannot be used clinically.
Second, long-term use of melatonin may affect the rhythm of secreting melatonin in your body.
Third, taking melatonin for a long time may cause some side effects, such as nausea, dizziness, headache and digestive tract symptoms.
【Question 8】Is it necessary to buy sleep aid technology products?
Shen Chenyu: Some sleep aids such as pillows, mattresses, sleep meters, etc. do not have a lot of clinical research evidence, and most doctors will not directly recommend these things. However, a mattress or pillow may indeed increase comfort and indirectly improve sleep. In addition, blackout curtains, eye masks, etc. have a scientific basis, because shading can ensure the secretion of our melatonin. This point should also be paid special attention to, playing mobile phones before going to bed will affect melatonin secretion because of the blue light of the screen, so you should also pay attention to the influence of mobile phones when insomnia.
Finally, we recommend that insomnia problems first use relatively less expensive behavioral cognitive therapy to correct your perception of sleep and wrong behavior. If you really can't turn to drugs, then consider more expensive sleep aid technology.
Written by: Liao Xinyu
Editor: Li Xiaodong
Copyright statement: This article is an exclusive contribution of Tencent News "Goose Drop Doctor", and unauthorized media reproduction is prohibited.
![When people change, love is far away[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)