Tide At present, the clinical field of domestic sleep medicine generally divides sleep health into four core dimensions: sleep duration, sleep rhythm, sleep structure, and daytime function. Some cutting-edge studies tend to include subjective sleep perception quality instead of daytime function as core evaluation items. Both classification methods are currently used in different scenarios, and there is no completely unified conclusion.
Last week, I treated a student who was preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination. He slept for 8 hours every day, but he always felt that his brain could not work. His accuracy in doing simulation questions dropped by almost 20%. After asking carefully, I found out that he was used to sleeping at 3 a.m. and starting at 12 noon, and his schedule was exactly the same as the exam time. Mismatch, this is a typical sleep rhythm problem - to put it bluntly, it is what we often call the biological clock out of order. This thing is like an old-fashioned wall clock hanging at home. If you force the hands to be different from the actual time, no matter how accurate it is, it will be useless to tell the time.
Don’t think that as long as your schedule is on time, everything will be fine. Last month, a woman who worked in corporate administration came to me and said that she went to bed at 11 a.m. and started at 7 a.m. every day, sleeping for 8 hours. She was still so sleepy during the day that she couldn’t even drink three cups of coffee. After a full night of sleep monitoring, it was found that she woke up 14 times in one night without realizing it, and deep sleep accounted for less than 3%. This is a problem with the sleep structure. Normal people's sleep follows a cycle of light sleep, deep sleep, and rapid eye movement sleep. It cycles 4 to 5 times a night. The deep sleep period helps you repair muscles and strengthen your immunity, while the rapid eye movement period helps you organize your memory and regulate your emotions. It doesn't matter which part is missing. It's like when you boil a pot of soup, the fire is too high and the meat is boiled.
Many people tend to ignore the assessment item of daytime function, thinking that as long as they get enough sleep at night, they are healthy. In fact, this is not the case. The ultimate purpose of sleep is to help you restore your state of mind during the day. If you are always distracted during meetings at work the next day, no matter how long you slept the night before, dozed off on the way to pick up the children, or even pinched your thighs from time to time to stay awake while driving on the highway, then there must be something wrong with your sleep. As for the subjective sleep perception dimension mentioned in many studies, it is actually easy to understand. I have met a patient before. The sleep monitoring data were all within the normal range. However, when she woke up, she always felt that she had not slept all night and was anxious all day long. This subjective discomfort can actually seriously affect the quality of life. This is the core reason why the academic community is currently discussing whether to adjust the division of the four dimensions.
When you evaluate your sleep, you don't need to stick to any standard values. As long as you feel relaxed when you wake up for a week or two in a row and don't feel sleepy during the day, there is basically no big problem. If you feel more tired after sleeping for more than half a month in a row, you can just see a professional sleep doctor for adjustment.
