Develop scientific sleep habits to protect daily physical and mental health

The average adult maintains a fixed rhythm of continuous sleep for 7-9 hours a day, which is currently recognized as the core standard of sleep health.

Don’t believe it, when I was conducting sleep user research, I met a girl who worked in cross-border e-commerce. She went to bed at 3 a.m. and went to bed at 11 a.m. every day. This habit has been maintained for four years. Last year, all the indicators in the company’s physical examination were excellent. On the contrary, several colleagues in the same department who forced themselves to lie down at 11 a.m. every day, rolled over until one or two o’clock before falling asleep, and climbed hard at 7 a.m., half of them had mild neurasthenia.

Oh, by the way, there has been a lot of controversy about "must go to bed early". The traditional health school advocates "sleeping at midnight to nourish the liver and gallbladder", but modern sleep medicine also clearly mentions that people with congenital sleep phase delay, as long as their work and rest form a fixed cycle, and there are no frequent awakenings during sleep and no persistent drowsiness after waking up, there is no need to forcefully change the work and rest. Forcibly reversing it will easily induce chronic insomnia. Some people used to say that you need to sleep for an integral multiple of 90 minutes to be healthy. I tried to deliberately block the time to wake up for a week, but I woke up dizzy. Later, after asking a specialist, I found out that this period is only the average value of the population, and individual differences are huge. There is no need to force it.

Many people now love to wear bracelets to measure sleep, and worry about the duration of deep sleep. I followed the trend and bought three different brands of monitoring equipment in the past two years. To be honest, ordinary healthy people have no need to worry about this value - the monitoring accuracy of current consumer-grade equipment is inherently limited, and different The length of deep sleep that people need is also different. I have seen planners who have only 18% deep sleep but are not sleepy even during three-hour meetings during the day. I have also seen office workers who still yawn continuously every day with 30% deep sleep. Instead of focusing on internal consumption of data, it is more reliable to pay more attention to your state after waking up.

As for whether or not to take a nap, everyone has their own reasons. The older generation always says that 20 minutes of squinting at noon is equivalent to one hour of sleep at night. However, for people who have difficulty falling asleep at night, most sleep doctors will recommend that they try not to sleep during the day. Even if they are sleepy and nodding at the table, it is best to walk around and drink ice cream. Otherwise, the ten minutes during the day may be replaced by two hours of turning pancakes at night.

Oh, and also, many people take melatonin blindly when they have insomnia. I would like to remind you that melatonin is only suitable for jet lag or occasional rhythm disorders. Long-term consumption will inhibit the secretion of melatonin. If you can't fall asleep after lying down for half an hour for more than two weeks, or wake up more than 3 times a night after falling asleep, don't make random adjustments on your own. Go directly to the sleep department for a polysomnography to find out the reason, which is more effective than any folk prescription.

To put it bluntly, sleep is the most personal physiological need. There is no one-size-fits-all template. As long as you have enough energy during the day and don't feel any physical discomfort, you don't have to set yourself up by other people's standards, right?