Source: CNR
Is there anything more embarrassing about waking up from a nap in the office than wet cuffs and a tabletop? It must have been a puddle of slimy saliva and then a non-stop hiccup......
Imagine yourself falling asleep drooling in front of your colleagues, it's a large-scale "social death" scene, and the migrant workers have already begun to watch the ticket price of immigrating to Mars.
However, what is more serious than affecting our personal image is that sleeping on our stomachs will also bring a lot of harm to our health. What are the disadvantages of sleeping on your stomach? What is the right way to open a lunch break? Today, Fat Branch and everyone will take a look at how sleeping on the stomach destroys the image and affects health.
Sleeping on your stomach makes you look completely useless
It's a bit embarrassing to wake up drooling and burping, and wonder how sleeping on our stomachs makes us look completely unimaged? Then dry the corners of your mouth and read on with Fat Branch!
What we call saliva, that is, saliva, is secreted by the salivary glands in the mouth, and under normal circumstances, the human body produces 1-1.5 liters of saliva every day, which can fill 3 bottles of mineral water that we see every day. Lubricating the oral mucosa and protecting the teeth are inseparable from the action of these saliva waters, and when the secretion is significantly reduced, people usually feel dry mouth.
Schematic diagram of the large salivary glands in the oral cavity
When people are awake, it is rare for saliva to flow out of the corners of their mouths, so why can't they control themselves when they fall asleep?
Except for infants and a few special cases, most people are able to actively swallow when awake and will not let saliva stay in the mouth for a long time. In sleep, the person's swallowing action will be reduced accordingly, and the secreted saliva cannot enter the digestive tract quickly, but is more likely to accumulate in the mouth. At this time, whether or not we drool is closely related to our sleeping position.
Sleeping on your back allows saliva to gradually gather behind your mouth, and after accumulating a certain amount, it can trigger the body's unconscious swallowing action. The sleeping position on the table makes saliva collect in the front of the mouth and cannot be swallowed in time. At the same time, sleeping on your stomach compresses the cheeks, and the parotid glands located on the cheeks are squeezed, resulting in increased saliva production. "Open source" and "throttling", coupled with the fact that this sleeping position will make people involuntarily open their mouths to breathe, and saliva dripping is inevitable.
Schematic diagram of the human hiccup mechanism
Most people's nap time is shortly after lunch, when our stomach is full, and if we lie down on the table immediately, leaning forward will cause the esophagus to dilate, and it is easier for gas to enter the stomach through the esophagus and irritate the stomach lining. At the same time, the dilated stomach body "has nowhere to exert itself" and can only compress the diaphragm; After waking up, the diaphragm is suddenly "liberated" and prone to involuntary spasmodic contractions, resulting in hiccups.
Time is saved, and health is saved
"Lying on the spot" during the lunch break, waking up and immediately putting to work is indeed a lot of time saving, especially for many office workers who cherish "time" like gold, compared with the time saved, sacrificing personal image is not a big deal.
But what if all this time saved in the middle of the day comes at the expense of our health? Studies have shown that sleeping on your stomach for a long time may be the cause of a variety of diseases.
After falling asleep, the blood flow and heart rate of the human body gradually slow down, and the posture of lying on the table to sleep is easy to compress the heart, lungs, carotid artery, gastrointestinal and other organs, and the burden on the heart and lungs increases; In addition, at this time, everyone has just finished lunch, and the blood flow to the digestive tract increases, which is more likely to cause insufficient blood supply to important organs such as the brain and lungs.
Therefore, when you wake up from a nap, you often have symptoms such as dizziness, tinnitus, and poor breathing, which is a manifestation of ischemia and hypoxia in major organs. In the long run, it is not only easy to induce cardiovascular and cerebrovascular and respiratory diseases, but also affect digestion and lead to digestive system diseases.
Lying on the table for a nap, the neck and spine are in a twisted state for a long time, which can easily lead to excessive fatigue of the neck and lower back muscles, induce cervical spondylosis, lumbar muscle strain and scoliosis. This is undoubtedly worse for many migrant workers, because of the long-term use of mobile phones and computers, the cervical spine and lower back are not very healthy.
Schematic diagram of the ulnar nerve
At the same time, the posture of napping at the desk requires the elbow to be bent outward, and the head and table at the same time to exert pressure on the "numbness" of the elbow, which can easily cause damage or lesions to the ulnar nerve located here, resulting in muscle atrophy, sore fingers and numbness.
In addition, the position of resting the head on the arm may also compress the eyeball, resulting in obstruction of blood flow in the eye, increased intraocular pressure, and a certain degree of damage to the eye. Especially for glaucoma patients and people with high myopia, it is necessary to avoid this sleeping position as much as possible.
Lunch break is a technical job
Having said all that, what is the right way to open a nap?
The best way, of course, is to get rid of the habit of taking a lunch break, and it would be great if you could lie down and rest for a while in a quiet environment away from the light. If you don't have such resting conditions, you can also adjust the height of the seat or add cushions to the table to minimize the bending of the upper body and relax the body.
In addition to this, there are many details that need to be paid enough attention. First of all, the practice of taking a nap as soon as you finish lunch is not conducive to food digestion, and the correct way is to walk around properly after lunch and then take a lunch break.
Moreover, the nap time should be controlled at 15-30 minutes, and the "long sleep without waking up" nap that many friends like is not the best solution for a lunch break. Once the sleep time is too long, the human body enters a deep sleep, and there will be obvious discomfort when waking up, which is more likely to produce "wake-up gas", which will affect the work status of the whole afternoon, especially for many partners engaged in complex and dangerous work, and may cause more serious consequences.
Compared with blindly working, the combination of work and rest is more conducive to improving our work and study efficiency, so for us, learning how to rest is a compulsory homework.
Creative team: New media team of China Science and Technology Museum
Audit expert: Wu Xinsheng, deputy chief physician of the Department of Gastroenterology, 371st Hospital of the People's Liberation Army