Sleep health consultation teacher Liu

90% of the cases are not that you don’t sleep enough, but that the proportion of deep sleep is insufficient and the sleep structure is disrupted. The remaining 10% needs to be investigated for thyroid function, blood sugar fluctuations, or mismatch between circadian rhythm and your daily routine.

The sleep structure is actually like the quilt you cover in winter. The outermost layer of light sleep is the quilt cover to block cold wind, and the fluffy and thick cotton batting in the middle is the deep sleep layer that helps you restore your energy. Normally, the proportion of deep sleep should be 15%-25% of the total sleep time. If the cotton batting is as thin as a piece of paper, no matter how big the quilt is, it will not keep you warm, and no matter how long you sleep, it will not relieve you.

Last week, a 1996-year-old girl who was working as an operator for an Internet company came to me and said that she set her alarm clock strictly at 12 o'clock and went to bed at 8 o'clock, and the full time was counted as 8 hours. As a result, she still couldn't open her eyes after drinking two glasses of American food in the morning. She always got distracted during meetings, and her boss talked to her twice. I wore a home sleep monitor for her for a week, and the results showed that the proportion of deep sleep was only 8%, not even half of the minimum standard. I took the report to look at doctors from different directions. The doctor from the Western Medicine Sleep Department first asked her if she snored and kept her awake. After ruling out obstructive sleep apnea, it was concluded that she always brought work to bedtime, and her sympathetic nerves were too excited, so her deep sleep was always interrupted. ； The old doctor of traditional Chinese medicine took a pulse and said that she usually likes to drink iced milk tea and always stays up late to catch up on plans. Her liver qi is depressed, her heart and spleen are weak, and her sleep is floating and unable to sink. The two statements are actually not contradictory. They both talk about the same problem: her sleep did not "sink" at all.

It's interesting to say that a few years ago, I met an older brother who was a long-distance trucker. On the other hand, he would sleep at home for 12 hours every time he got off work, and he still woke up with back pain and dizziness. It’s not a problem with his sleep structure, it’s because he works shifts all year round and travels at night, which messes up his circadian rhythm. He drives in the early morning hours when he should be secreting melatonin to help him sleep, and he forces himself to sleep during the day when his cortisol should be elevated and he should be awake. It’s equivalent to forcing an alarm clock to a rooster and letting it crow in the middle of the night.

Many people are now obsessed with the "8-hour sleep theory". They think that sleeping for 8 hours is healthy, but this is not true. My own experience is that as long as you wake up feeling refreshed, it doesn’t matter even if you only sleep 6 hours a day. On the other hand, if you still feel tired even after 10 hours of sleep, something must be wrong.

There is a lot of debate on the Internet right now about "should you exercise before going to bed?" One group says that motor nerves are excited before going to bed, making it difficult to fall asleep, while the other group says that moderate exercise can relax and help sleep. In fact, they are both correct, but the premise is not clearly stated. If you dance the Pamela or lift irons until you are sweating one hour before going to bed, you will definitely keep your eyes open until late at night with excitement. However, if you do 10 minutes of stretching, baduanjin, or stand against the wall for a while to relax your shoulders and back that have been stiff during the day, it will actually help you fall into deep sleep faster. I have a client who works as an accountant. He used to have insomnia until two or three o'clock. Later, he listened to me and did 8 minutes of relaxation and stretching before going to bed every day. Within half a month, he no longer needed to rely on melatonin to fall asleep.

To be honest, I have been in this business for so many years, and I have seen the most outrageous sleep problem. He is a young man who has just graduated. He has to watch mukbang for 2 hours every day before going to bed. The more he watches, the hungrier he gets. So he can’t help but get up and cook instant noodles. After eating, his stomach is so bloated that he lies in bed and tosses and turns until he can fall asleep at two or three o’clock. Do you think it’s strange that this sleep can be good? Many people have sleep problems. It's not really a big problem, it's just a small hole in their living habits that hasn't been fixed.

Finally, I would like to remind everyone that if you have adjusted your living habits for half a month and stopped short-circuiting and drinking less milk tea and coffee before going to bed, and your sleep still does not improve, you should go to the hospital for formal sleep monitoring. Don’t force yourself to do it, and don’t buy those amazing sleep-aid IQ taxes, sleep-aid sprays, and sleep-aid aromatherapy online. Oh, by the way, if you have any questions about sleep problems that you are unsure about, you can also leave a comment and I will reply as soon as I see it.