Sleep health consultation teacher Liu

You don’t have to force yourself to lie down before 11 o’clock, you don’t have to count sheep until you can memorize the family tree of sheep with your eyes open, and you don’t have to worry about the sky falling when you occasionally stay up until 12 o’clock. Good sleep is a sleep that adapts to your own biological clock, is not top-heavy when you wake up, and does not require three or four cups of coffee during the day. The core of adjustment is never to make up for 8 hours, but to calibrate the "sleep trigger switch" to match your body's rhythm.

To be honest, I have been in this business for almost 8 years, and the most annoying thing I hear from outsiders is, "If you can't sleep, you just play on your mobile phone. If you don't go to bed early, it will be over." Last week I just picked up a girl who works as an e-commerce operator. I forced myself to turn off the lights at 11 o'clock and lie down on my back for three months. As a result, I stayed up until after 2 o'clock every day with my eyes open. When I came in, my eyes were swollen like walnuts. I cried and said that I was afraid that I would die suddenly at my work station one day. I looked through her schedule. During the big sales period, she often had to keep an eye on the data until 1 a.m. Even if she stayed up until 2 a.m. the day before, she still insisted on getting up at 7 a.m. to "replenish her healthy schedule." Isn't this just a competition with her body?

In the past two years, there has been quite a quarrel in the academic circles about sleep adjustment. One group is the "fixed schedule group", which advocates that no matter how long you sleep the night before, you must get up at a fixed time in the morning. Even if you only sleep for 3 hours, you have to get up. The other group is the "relaxation group". They say don't lie down for 20 minutes. If you don't fall asleep, get up and sit for a while, read a book and do something mindless. When you feel sleepy, go back to sleep. You don't have to force yourself to sleep. This method is more suitable for doctors and nurses who often work shifts and Internet workers who have to connect with customers at any time. After all, you can't ask a programmer who has just finished watching online until 2 a.m. to get up at 7 a.m. the next day to "live a healthy life", right? There is no right or wrong between the two methods, it just depends on which one suits you best.

The first thing many people ask when they come for consultation is "Teacher Liu, can I take melatonin?" I never give a one-size-fits-all answer to this. The consensus among Western medicine is that it is okay to take it for a short period of time, such as when you are jet lag or occasionally stay up for a few days. The dose should be controlled within 1 mg. It is okay to take it for three to five days. However, long-term taking may indeed inhibit your own melatonin secretion, and the more you eat, the more you cannot sleep. The Chinese medicine teachers I have contacted tend to believe that insomnia is mostly related to liver stagnation and spleen deficiency. For example, many people can't stop thinking about movies before going to bed. Most of them are caused by recent stress. In this case, you can soak your feet before going to bed, press the Yongquan point on the soles of your feet for two minutes, or drink half a cup of warm milk, which is much more effective than taking melatonin. I once had a back-end client who took melatonin for half a year. At first, he took 1mg and it was effective. Later, he took 5mg and lay down for two hours and he was still energetic. I asked him to stop the melatonin first and put his phone in the living room to charge when he got home. Don't take it into the bedroom and sit down before going to bed. For 5 minutes, don’t think about anything. If any muscle is tight, rub it twice. Don’t set a KPI for yourself to “fall asleep quickly” as soon as you lie down. After trying it for a week, he told me that now he can fall asleep after lying down for 15 minutes, and when he wakes up in the morning, he won’t feel as heavy as before.

Let’s talk about a trivia that many people don’t know. Our sleep cycle is 90 minutes. If you happen to be woken up by the alarm clock during the deep sleep period, even if you sleep for 8 hours, you will feel like you have been beaten all night long. Instead, you will wake up in the light sleep period after sleeping for 6 hours, and you will feel refreshed all day long. I sometimes have to stay up until past 12 o'clock to catch up on consultation plans. I never feel "guilty about staying up late". I just wake up 20 minutes later the next day. Really, the natural enemy of sleep is never going to bed late, but your anxiety about sleep. I have seen too many people who only stay up late once in a while, label themselves as "insomniacs", and browse various sleep-aid content every day. Instead, they become more and more unable to fall asleep, and finally develop habitual insomnia. It is really unnecessary.

Oh, by the way, there is a bottom line that needs to be made clear: If you have been lying down for more than one month and cannot fall asleep for more than an hour, or sleep less than 4 hours a day, and are completely unable to work and live normally during the day, don't make random adjustments on your own, go to the hospital's sleep department for monitoring first, and ruling out pathological factors is more important than anything else.

Yesterday, a retired aunt sent me a WeChat message, saying that now she can go home from square dancing and soak her feet for 10 minutes. She doesn’t need to watch those sleep-aid live broadcasts while lying on the bed. She will be hooked after lying down for 20 minutes. Before, taking melatonin every day didn’t help. You see, there are so many complicated truths. Your body knows how to sleep better than you do, so just don’t mess with it all the time.