What does a sleep health manager mainly do?

To put it simply, they are professionals who help you find out the core reasons for your poor sleep, tailor an improvement plan, and adjust with you until your sleep state stabilizes. This is not the "sleep sales" posted on the Internet that only sells sleep pillows and teaches you how to count sheep.

I have been in this business for almost 6 years, and the most users I have encountered are those I found after half a year of messing around with it. Last week, I hired a teacher who is doing education and training. He is 36 years old. He said that he could not fall asleep at 3 a.m. for 3 months in a row. He had to get up at 7 a.m. to read early in the morning. Melatonin was useless until I had a headache. I didn’t dare to take sleeping pills. I gave him a plan before he came up. I first let him wear an at-home sleep monitoring bracelet for three days, and kept a complete diary of his daily routine, diet, and emotions. Finally, I discovered that his problem was not a "chaotic routine" at all. It was that he had to spend an hour every day replying to messages from his parents after the evening shift. His nerves were constantly tense. In addition, he loved to drink iced American style, and sometimes drank it at 4 p.m. Caffeine has a long half-life, and his nerves were still excited when he went to bed.

There are actually many differences in the industry now. Some colleagues insist that sleep adjustment can only rely on cognitive behavioral therapy, and any supplements and sleep aids are IQ taxes. Others believe that it is more efficient to rely on equipment monitoring and supplement intervention in the entire process. My own experience cannot be generalized. For example, the training teacher could not spare a fixed time for long-term cognitive behavioral training. I first adjusted his coffee drinking time and asked him not to drink caffeinated drinks after 2 p.m. After get off work, he put his work phone in the living room and spent 15 minutes doing a foot bath + breathing adjustment. In conjunction with 10 days of low-dose gamma-aminobutyric acid, he was able to fall asleep smoothly before 12 o'clock in just two weeks.

Of course, we don’t just care about not being able to sleep. Many people think that they will be fine if they sleep 8 hours a day. They come to me because they are always sleepy during the day and just try to catch fish at work. Last time, a driver who drove a long-distance truck said that he had to stop and squint for 10 minutes after driving for two hours for fear of getting into trouble. After checking the monitoring data, I found that he had sleep apnea at night, and the lowest blood oxygen saturation was only 68%. In this case, I would not adjust his schedule at all. I directly suggested that he go to the otolaryngology department for examination first, and if necessary, get a ventilator, and then adjust it with weight loss, otherwise it would be useless no matter how long he slept.

Speaking of which, this industry is quite complex. You need to understand some basic sleep medicine, clinical psychology, and even some nutrition and kinesiology. If you are unsure of the situation, you must not insist on a plan. If you need to be referred to the hospital, you must first let the person go to the hospital to check for pathological problems. After all, not sleeping well may seem small, but the problems that may be hidden behind it can be big or small.