Sleep health tips

In fact, for the vast majority of ordinary people who do not have organic diseases, if they want to improve their sleep quality, they don’t need to do so many fancy operations. They don’t need to force themselves to sleep for 8 hours, and they don’t need to stock up on a bunch of sleep-aid aromatherapy and sleep instruments. First, do these two things: "The difference between going to bed every day should not exceed half an hour" and "Getting out of bed within 10 minutes after waking up." This can at least solve 70% of your problems of difficulty falling asleep, light sleep, and tiredness when you wake up.

I helped a friend who works as an e-commerce operator adjust her sleep a while ago. In order to make up for the sleep she missed during the workday, she often stayed up until one or two o'clock in the afternoon on weekends. As a result, she stayed up until three or four o'clock in the morning from Monday to Wednesday and calculated the store's conversion rate with her eyes open. Her whole body was swollen like a soaked sea cucumber. I made these two requirements for her. Even if she went to bed at 3 o'clock the day before, she had to get up on time at 8 o'clock the next morning. She could not stay in bed on weekends. If she was too sleepy, she would lie down at her workstation and sleep for 20 minutes at noon, and it could not exceed half an hour at most. She tried it half-heartedly for two weeks. Last week, she told me that now she is so sleepy that she can't open her eyes even when she is lying in bed and scrolling through two pages of home posts. She no longer has to turn over and over again to count sheep to more than a thousand.

Speaking of this, some people must ask, can I play with my mobile phone before going to bed? Nowadays, two factions are quarreling on the Internet. One faction says that blue light inhibits the secretion of melatonin and should not be touched. The other faction says that after a tired day, I just want to lie in bed and watch videos to relax. If I hold it in, it will make it even harder to fall asleep. I have talked about this problem with Dr. Li from the sleep department of the city's top three hospitals before, and what he said is quite realistic: If watching funny cat movies for 10 minutes can put all the anger you suffered during the day and the unfinished work behind you, then it doesn't matter if you play for a while. It is better than lying down and thinking about "will your performance not be up to standard this month?" But be careful not to play too exciting content - for example, don't play ranked games, don't check work group messages, and don't watch horror movies. Turn the brightness to the lowest level. It's best not to lie on your side and press your eyes. If you feel sleepy after playing for more than ten minutes, just throw your phone away. Nothing will happen.

Oh, by the way, some people ask if it is true to drink hot milk and red wine before going to bed to help you sleep? To be honest, the tryptophan content in hot milk is really not enough to make you sleepy. What’s more, when you drink milk slowly for a few minutes, you relax and become sleepy. If you are lactose intolerant and have to run to the toilet after drinking it, you are simply asking for trouble. It is better to drink half a cup of warm water. As for red wine, it's even more ridiculous. Alcohol can indeed make you fall asleep quickly, but it will greatly reduce your deep sleep time. You will easily wake up in the middle of the night, and you will have a headache when you wake up. It is totally not worth the gain.

When I was jet-lagged, I tried a lot of online sleep-aid methods, such as the 478 breathing method and listening to alpha wave music, but none of them worked for me. The more I breathed, the more energetic I became. Later, I came up with a wild trick: after lying flat, I stretched my toes consciously, then relaxed them, then my calves, thighs, stomach, shoulders, and face. Every time I relaxed a part, I silently said "This part has fallen asleep." Often, by the time I relax to the shoulders, I am already so sleepy that I am unconscious. However, when I recommended this method to my best friend, she rolled her eyes and said that it didn’t work after she tried it. She had to listen to a half-hour replay of a college high-level math open class before she could fall asleep. So there really is no universal sleep aid formula. Don’t rely on other people’s experience. The most important thing is that you feel comfortable after trying it yourself.

Oh and also, don’t be frightened by the anxiety-mongering content on the Internet that “lack of sleep can lead to premature aging and cancer”. It’s not a big deal to stay up late once in a while. A 20-minute nap at noon the next day can relieve the problem. On the contrary, many people’s sleep problems are caused by themselves. They stayed up until 2 o’clock the day before and started to panic as soon as they lay in bed the next day, “Am I going to have insomnia again today?”

In fact, sleep doesn’t really need to be too burdensome. The more you take it seriously and the more you focus on “when will I fall asleep,” the more you can’t sleep. It’s like holding sand in your hand. The tighter you hold it, the faster it leaks out. Don't just stay in bed watching TV shows or eating takeaways when you have nothing to do. This will allow your body to form a conditioned reflex of "the bed is for sleeping." It will work even if you spend thousands more on a sleeping aid or take melatonin. In fact, if you can't sleep for more than a week in a row, don't force yourself to do it. It is much more reliable to go to the sleep department of the hospital to register for a consultation than to search blindly for folk remedies on the Internet.