Bill Gates recently said on an interview show that when he was younger, he often competed with his colleagues to see who slept less.
When someone says, "I only sleep 5 hours" or "Sometimes I don't sleep at all," Gates says, "Wow, that's great, sleep is lazy and unnecessary." ”
In 2020, Gates' father died of Alzheimer's, and as he got older, he also paid attention to the length and quality of sleep every day.
"One of the most predictive factors in any dementia, including Alzheimer's, is whether you get a good night's sleep," Gates said. ”
Now, he aims to sleep 7 to 8 hours a night.
"Idle Love" said: "The secret of health preservation should be to sleep well." Sleep can restore essence, sleep can nourish qi, sleep can strengthen the spleen and stomach, sleep can strengthen bones and tendons. ”
All life forms require sleep, and most animals look for food when they are awake and then find safe places to sleep and hide from predators, but the need for sleep in humans is much more complex.
We need to remove waste from brain cells during sleep, conserve energy, restore vital bodily functions, repair damaged tissues, and so on.
Without adequate sleep, the brain cannot work properly, let alone cope with daily study and work.
However, modern people are plagued by "garbage sleep", difficulty falling asleep, insufficient sleep time, low sleep quality... Medicine believes that sleep diseases include more than 90 specific problems in three categories: unable to sleep, unable to wake up, and not sleeping well.
Bill Gates has mentioned the book "Why We Sleep" several times, which states:
If you sleep less than six or seven hours a night, your immune system will be destroyed and your risk of cancer will more than double;
Among the causative factors of Alzheimer's disease, sleep deprivation is a key factor;
Reduced sleep for a week will interfere with blood sugar concentrations, and at the same time increase the possibility of coronary artery blockage and fragility, allowing you to move towards cardiovascular disease, stroke, and depressed heart failure;
Lack of sleep, the concentration of hormones that make you feel hungry will increase, so people who do not sleep enough always feel that they are not full, which leads to obesity ...
At the same time, sleep is a mirror that reflects the internal problems of the body.
If you wake up with heartburn, chest pain, shortness of breath, or abnormal tachycardia or bradycardia; Waking up with a headache or sweating... These are all tips for needing a physical examination.
Some people say, usually stay up late, don't you make up for it on the weekend?
In a recent study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, a team at Pennsylvania State University recruited 15 healthy men between the ages of 20 and 35 to participate in an 11-day, 10-night inpatient sleep test.
For the first three nights, participants slept 10 hours per night; For the next five nights, participants' sleep was restricted to 5 hours per night; Finally, two recovery nights followed, and they were again allowed to sleep 10 hours a night.
The researchers measured the participants' resting heart rate and blood pressure every two hours. The results showed that the two recovery nights did not bring the participants' heart rate and blood pressure back to baseline levels.
For the heart, staying up late during the week and sleeping late on weekends to make up for this way is far from the damage.
According to WHO, 27% of the world's population has sleep disorders. According to CCTV news reports, more than 300 million people in the mainland are suffering from insomnia, and various sleep disorders account for about 38% of the population.
The "2023 China Healthy Sleep White Paper" shows that the primary factor of insomnia in adults is work pressure.
How long are we going to sleep? When is it time to go to bed? How much deep sleep do we need as we age?
In general, the amount of sleep each person needs per night decreases with age.
Children between the ages of 5 and 12 need 9-11 hours of sleep a day; 8-10 hours for adolescents aged 13 to 20; For adults over the age of 20, 7-9 hours of sleep is sufficient.
Teens sleep more than two hours less each night than they need to, and adults sleep less than seven hours a night.
In addition to the length of time, how do you know if you have slept well?
The simplest way to judge is to look at the state of waking up, after a good night's sleep, you can wake up soon after waking up and maintain a state of energy for the day; The mood is generally good and no naps are required.
If when you wake up feeling like you're not sleeping, you have to drink a cup of coffee to work properly, or you're restless while driving or in a meeting and can't stay awake, these are signs that you may not be getting enough sleep.
On a deeper level, if you wake up and are still sleepy, feel tired all day, fall asleep when you don't want to sleep, and be grumpy and moody when you wake up, these are signs that you may have serious sleep problems.
"Why We Sleep" talks about the factors that interfere with falling asleep, and it is necessary to control the two important sleep switches of body temperature and brain.
People are thermostatic animals, but they are affected by circadian rhythms, and when they are active during the day, their body temperature rises, and when they enter a resting state at night, their body temperature drops.
Therefore, before going to sleep, you can consciously increase your body surface temperature and reduce your body temperature, such as taking a bath an hour and a half before going to bed, and doing a foot bath that can improve blood circulation in the feet and promote the release of body heat.
In addition to the influence of temperature, brain state has a greater impact on sleep.
Encountering troubles, working until bedtime, playing games, playing mobile phones to make the brain excited, can make it difficult to sleep.
In a monotonous situation, the brain is easy to empty.
Just like driving on the highway, people can easily get sleepy because the scenery in front of them remains unchanged.
If you read a mystery novel with a fascinating plot, it will be difficult for you to fall asleep, but if it is a boring professional book, it is easy to fall asleep.
So, boring things are often not welcome, but are good friends for sleep.
Voltaire once said, "God has given us hope and sleep to compensate for all the troubles of the world." ”
Sleep is the body's own maintenance system, science and medicine can not keep the body's rhythm balanced, only sleep can do it.
Sleeping well is the cause and consequence of whether the state of life is good or not.
We need to have a relaxed state of mind, a combination of work and rest of life, in order to have a good sleep, and good sleep brings a positive working state, abundant energy, smooth skin, healthy body...