"Go to bed early and get up early to be in good health", have you heard the phrase since you were a child?
In our minds, we seem to be particularly obsessed with going to bed early, and once we go to bed late one day, or stay up all night, we feel that it is a damage to the body, and it may take several days of adequate sleep to make up for it.
Over time, in the eyes of many people, going to bed early and getting up early has become a way to maintain health, especially some middle-aged and elderly people, it is rare to see those who have not gone to bed after 10 o'clock.
A large part of people also feel anxious about not being able to fall asleep in time, and even choose to take medication to help them fall asleep, causing unnecessary damage to the body, is this really the right practice?
A recent new study may change this mindset, showing that going to bed early may not be a good thing, but let's take a look at what happened:
1. Research findings: Go to bed early and wake up early to live a long life or pseudoscience?
According to common sense, most people think that going to bed early and waking up early is better for the body than going to bed later and waking up later, but in reality, many common senses are not correct at all times.
To test this idea, a research team from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom conducted a related experiment, in which researchers gathered nearly 80,000 adult volunteers and conducted a follow-up survey for about five years, and the results were obtained after collecting and analyzing the volunteers' sleep and health data.
It was found that more than 4,000 volunteers suffered from cardiovascular diseases, the development of which has a great impact on physical health and longevity. More than 25 percent of these volunteers fell asleep after 12 a.m., which seems to confirm the claim that sleeping late is not good for the body.
However, the researchers found that there was another group of nearly 4,000 volunteers, who also suffered from cardiovascular diseases, and most of these people fell asleep before 10 o'clock, and only those who fell asleep between 10 o'clock and 12 o'clock had the lowest probability of suffering from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.
The study uses big data statistical analysis, and from the data analysis results, the researchers believe that going to bed too early or too late may lead to cardiovascular disease, or that there is a certain connection between the two, but this does not mean that going to bed early and sleeping late will necessarily lead to cardiovascular problems.
However, due to the limitations of the study, it is not possible to determine the specific cause of this association, because there are many predisposing factors for cardiovascular disease, and sleep problems may be just one of them.
However, researchers speculate based on data that this may be related to our state and lifestyle before going to bed, such as eating stimulants such as caffeine, strenuous exercise and poor mental state, etc., which may lead to the inability to form a regular pattern during falling asleep, often unable to fall asleep when the body needs to rest, and it is difficult for important organs such as the heart to adjust their operating balance in time, which increases the workload of cardiovascular organs after falling asleep.
The people who can stay asleep between 10 o'clock and 12 o'clock are less affected by the above adverse factors, the body switches between rest and activity is more reasonable and regular, and the work and self-repair of body organs are relatively normal, so the probability of suffering from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases is also the lowest.
However, the doctor reminded that about sleeping, in addition to paying attention to the question of falling asleep sooner or later, there are several other important points, which are related to the quality of the entire sleep process.
Second, in addition to paying attention to morning and evening, these points are equally important when sleeping
1. Sleep duration
According to the recommendations of the American Sleep Academy, adults should get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night, which is to ensure that the body can rest and recover adequately.
People who sleep for a short period of time may experience problems such as fatigue, poor concentration, and weakened immunity due to insufficient rest;
People who sleep for a long time may experience back pain, headaches, and drowsiness due to prolonged low activity. Therefore, the duration of sleep between 7 and 9 hours can be considered as a healthy reference range.
2. Sleeping environment
First and foremost, maintaining a good room temperature is an important factor in creating a healthy sleeping environment.
According to research, most people are comfortable with a room temperature between 18°C and 22°C, which helps to promote falling asleep and falling into deep sleep. A room temperature that is too high or too low can interfere with sleep, causing the regulation of the body's body temperature to be disrupted, which can lead to difficulty falling asleep or waking up easily.
Secondly, ambient noise can interfere with our state of falling asleep, leading to interruptions and shallowness of sleep. This is because noise stimuli can cause a stress response within the human body, leading to hormone secretion and physiological disturbances.
Therefore, it is also very important to keep the sleeping environment quiet, using earplugs, adjusting the living environment, or using white noise can effectively reduce the ambient noise, which can help us get a deeper sleep.
3. Eat before bedtime
The recent period of diet before going to bed has a relatively large impact on the quality of sleep, most of the time in the sleep process the body is spent in a static or low-power state, the digestive system will also enter a state of rest accordingly, if the diet before going to bed is excessive, high salt, high fat, spicy and irritating, etc., will increase the burden on the digestive system, may affect the quality of sleep.
Therefore, a healthy bedtime diet should be low-fat and low-sugar, avoid high-fat and high-sugar foods, choose light and easy-to-digest foods, and it is recommended to eat more tryptophan-rich foods, such as fish, dairy products, legumes, etc., which can promote the synthesis of melatonin and improve the regulatory effect of melatonin on sleep, so as to achieve the purpose of deep sleep.
3. The doctor reminds that if you have sleep problems, it is most important to find the root cause
First of all, sleep problems are a complex problem that can be caused by a variety of causes.
Taking the more common insomnia as an example, it may be caused by a variety of factors such as life Xi, mental state, and physical diseases. Therefore, it is not enough to solve sleep problems by taking sleep aids, and it is necessary to identify the root cause of the problem before targeted treatment.
At present, the commonly used sleep aids in clinical practice are to improve sleep through the regulation of the central nervous system.
Commonly used sleep aids in clinical practice include benzodiazepines (triazolam, estazolam, etc.) and non-benzodiazepines (such as zolpidem, dexzopiclone, etc.), which can reduce insomnia and improve sleep quality by affecting the excitability of the center.
However, if sleep aids are not used properly, they can lead to a range of health problems, the most prominent of which is drug dependence and drug resistance.
When sleeping aids are used for a long time, the nervous system gradually adapts to the effects of the drug, resulting in a decrease in the effectiveness of the drug, and the need to gradually increase the dose of the drug to achieve the same effect, resulting in dependence on the drug. If the medication is stopped, patients may experience adverse effects such as insomnia, anxiety, depression, etc.
Therefore, for the treatment of sleep problems, we should first identify the root cause of the problem in order to have a more effective solution. For example, if insomnia is caused by poor Xi lifestyle habits, such as late dinner, overexcitement before bedtime, etc., then by adjusting these lifestyle habits, the purpose of improving sleep quality can generally be achieved by adjusting these Xi lifestyle habits, and no medication is required at all.
If insomnia is related to physical diseases, the disadvantages of blindly choosing to take sleeping aids at this time are even greater, not only to bear the possible side effects of the drugs, but also to delay the treatment of physical diseases, resulting in more serious complications.
Therefore, in the treatment of insomnia, it is necessary to consult a doctor to find out the root cause of the problem, and then take corresponding treatment measures according to the specific situation, so as to achieve the goal of effectively improving sleep quality.
In short, going to bed early and waking up early in common sense thinking may not be a behavior that is beneficial to the body, and going to bed too early or too late may increase the risk of disease in the body, thus affecting physical health.
Of course, the importance of sleep is not simply manifested in the morning and evening of falling asleep, but also related to many factors such as sleep duration, environment and diet before bedtime, so when encountering sleep problems, you should seek the help of a professional doctor and choose the right coping plan according to the doctor's guidance.
[References]
[1] Wu Chutian, Zhang Chenxing, Xiao Lin, et al.Meta-analysis of the relationship between sleep duration and sleep quality and the risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease[J].Chinese Journal of General Practice, 2020, 23(36):7.
Correlation analysis between sleep duration and the prevalence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases[D].Huazhong University of Science and Technology,2019.
[3] Li Zhihui, Zhang Ziyan, Huang Xiaomei, et al. Research progress on the influence of environmental physical factors on sleep[J].Journal of Environment and Health, 2019.
[4] Xu Zhe, Zhang Jinxia, Zhang Xiuhong, et al.Cohort study of the relationship between sleep duration and all-cause mortality risk in middle-aged and elderly people[J].Chinese Journal of General Practice, 2023, 26(28):3507-3512.
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